In a little less than two weeks, the doors of Notre Dame Cathedral will reopen. In April of 2019, catastrophic fire destroyed the spire and the roof of this French icon. Now we stand about a year and a half later to see the beauty of Notre Dame accessible once again. Preparations for the day of reopening, especially for the initial Eucharistic liturgy, have claimed a great deal of attention in...
In the Book of Daniel, the sacred author writes of a vision of “one like a Son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven.” Commentaries on this particular book of the Scriptures have come to the conclusion that the astral seer is actually looking at a constellation known as the Pleiades. The Pleiades is an observed pattern or group of stars that sits in the northwestern sky. At a...
Today’s reading from the Book of Revelation is filled with symbols and images that are confusing and somewhat disturbing. The symbols and images are all taken out of the Hebrew Scriptures and brought forward into the New Testament by John of Patmos.
We are introduced to two witnesses who are referred to as two olive trees and two lampstands. At various times in the history of Biblical...
Scrolls, angels, trumpets, various letters, and all sorts of images, each of them seven in number, make the Book of Revelation particularly difficult to understand unless we realize that all of these are symbols of our life as Christians. As I am sure you have heard it said, seven is regarded as the perfect number which designates the angels or the trumpets or the letters as very important. I...
The scene of the fifth chapter of the Book of Revelation is a continuation of the scene from chapter four. We are in the heavenly throne room. After receiving the command to write to the seven churches in Asia Minor, John is “caught up in the spirit” to the throne room in heaven where he is to receive a series of visions that culminate in the ultimate victory of Christ at the end...