Saturday of the 34th week in Ordinary Time
Readings of the day: Revelation 22:1-7; Psalm 95:1-2, 3-5, 6-7ab (R: see Revelation 22:20c); Luke 21:34-36
“Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!” This
Aramaic then English response to our Psalm is not actually from the Psalms. It
is the next-to-last verse of the Book of Revelation, following what we have
heard today, also from Revelation, in our first reading. Clearly these are
words of anticipation of the Lord’s return in glory. Would this response, “Marana
tha, Come, Lord Jesus,” not fit best with our season of Advent, which we begin
this evening?
Why do we have this anticipation of Advent?
Why this prayer, “Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus”? It is a very ancient Christian
prayer, going back to the earliest Church. It is a prayer for the end times;
for Jesus to return in glory. It was originally a plea to Jesus in a time of crisis
and persecution of the first Christians. How might we make this our prayer; how
might “Marana tha! Come Lord Jesus” become more real to us in our social
context, as Christians in 2014?
Would this prayer become more real to us
if we were to think of it not only as calling to mind the end times; Jesus’
return in glory (which it does), but also as drawing us back to our beginning;
to creation; to our re-creation as daughters and sons of Christ in baptism?
The Book of Revelation, for all its
strange imagery, is all about God’s act and our cooperation in this act of
re-creation. It is no accident that John’s last vision in Revelation, the river
flowing in all directions from the tree of life, “serving as medicine for the
nations,” recalls the paradise of the Garden of Eden in Genesis. The river and
the tree of life in Revelation are a reversal of sin; of the Fall of Adam and
Eve and the confusion of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. They are images of
restoration; of re-creation.
When in our lives have we experienced
restoration; re-creation; total freedom from the Fall (or, as many call it,
Original Sin)? We experience this act of restoration; re-creation; total
freedom from sin not first as an end, but as a beginning, in our baptism. We
experience this again and again in the other sacraments, especially in our
Eucharist, in reconciliation (a kind of “second baptism”), and in the anointing
of the sick. We experience this continually as “medicine for” individual souls;
“medicine for the nations.” Our lives as Christians are a continual experience
of restoration; re-creation; freedom from sin. From our baptism to our death
and entry into eternal life; from beginning to end, our lives are a continual
experience of “Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!”
Our Scriptures, too, are our continual experience of God among us, from creation to re-creation; from
the river and the tree of life in Eden to the river and the tree of life in
John’s vision in Revelation; from “in the beginning,” the words in Genesis that
introduce God’s creation of the universe, to a new beginning that we anticipate
in Jesus’ return in glory. “Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!”
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