Homily for Tuesday
34th Week of Ordinary Time
Nov. 26, 2024
Rev
14: 14-19
Christian Brothers, St.
Joseph Residence, N.R.
“Sitting on the cloud
was one who looked like a son of man, with a gold crown on his head and a sharp
sickle in his hand” (Rev 14: 14).
The Last Judgment (Giotto)
John the Visionary, prophet
of the Book of Revelation, has another vision of the final judgment. One “like a son of man” comes on a white
cloud, comes from heaven—suggestive of the words of 2 angels to the apostles as
they watched a cloud take Jesus out of their sight 40 days after his
resurrection: “Men of Galilee, … this
Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you
saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:9-11).
In John’s vision,
this son of man seems to direct 2 angels coming out of God’s temple in
heaven. They go out upon the earth to
reap God’s harvest.
Here’s a similarity
to Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the darnel (Matt 13:24-30,36-43). After the wheat has been reaped, “the Son of
Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of
sin and all evildoers, and throw them into the furnace of fire.”
In John’s vision, the
1st angel reaps the ripe harvest of God—presumably of grain, and presumably
gathering all of it for the Lord (Rev 14:15-16). This seems to mean that the Lord will gather
the just for himself, just as the Son of Man, coming in glory with all his
angels to judge all the nations, in Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25, will separate
sheep from goats and welcome the sheep into the kingdom prepared for them from
the foundation of the world (25:32-34).
The 2d angel wields
his sickle among the grapes to be harvested for God’s fury (Rev 14:18-19)—the
proverbial “grapes of wrath.” These seem
to be the wicked, akin to the goats in Matthew 25 (vv. 33,41).
The prophetic message
is obvious. Christ, the Son of Man, will
come from his place in heaven to execute judgment, to complete the redemption
of the just and to punish God’s opponents.
It’s a message of encouragement for those who are striving to be
faithful to Jesus—for John’s late-1st-century audience trying to cope with
persecution, and for Christ’s disciples in every age; for those who follow the
Lamb of the earlier vision in this same chapter of Revelation, which was our
reading yesterday (14:1-5).
The harvest will
come. Christ will save his own. If we persevere in his ways in spite of
trials—not only persecution but also the stresses of daily life—he’ll save us
for eternal life.
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