sample issue Testimonial:

“I always find the content insightful, concise and clear.”
~ Fr. Paul, Queensland, Australia

The closest thing to apocalypse most of us will experience in this life is falling in love. In the biblical Apocalypse, God reveals the great mystery at the end of time in these terms: “Behold, I make all things new.” Is there a human experience that refreshes our mortality as completely, and radiantly, as being utterly lost to love?

We think of Apocalypse as the worst thing that could possibly happen. It’s envisioned as a sort of Big Bang in reverse: the unraveling of reality as we know it. The scenario includes monsters, warfare, explosions, and anarchy. No more utilities delivered to the home; no more Starbucks on the corner. We’re talking desperate times, folks.

Apocalyptic literature intends to persuade us that all is lost, at least from the perspective of human efforts. Apocalypse is the revelation of what’s been hidden, remember. When the masks come off and we see good and evil as they truly are, it won’t be pretty. But Apocalypse doesn’t lead to despair for people of faith. It merely redirects our gaze to heaven, where the only authority powerful enough to save us awaits our attention.

And what awaits us in that heavenward glance is not harrowing. When all is lost in mortal terms, God is prepared to make all things new. Who wouldn’t hand off this ailing society of ours for the communion of saints in a heartbeat? Who wouldn’t surrender a relentless history of warfare for the Prince of Peace? Who wouldn’t trade the Ten Commandments for the Law of Love? The final revelation is that everything bad can be restored to original goodness in the end. Do we believe this?

For many of us, Judgment Day convened over a bottomless pit of hot coals makes more sense. Maybe it’s because we know human nature so well. We are it. So we need Apocalypse to be the “door into the terrible,” as Catholic novelist Mary Gordon calls it. Many of us would like our enemies to burn, all the evil folk who make history such a burden and misery to the many. We hold onto the door to the terrible because we want a place or a time where the anguish of the world will find its answer, where justice (on our terms) will be served once and for all.

But what if John’s vision is right? What if human history is the door to the terrible? What if, after passing through the agony of this life—after wars and cancers and injustices and losses too many to count or to bear—what if God’s great revelation to us is simply love, which restores all things to wholeness, newness, and happiness? If that’s the door we anticipate, who’s willing to walk down the path of such love today?

Related scripture links

Barnabas sponsors Paul: Acts 9:26-28
First missionary journey: Acts 13:1-14:28
Making things new: Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 11:19-20; 36:26-28; 2 Pet. 3:13
Separation of Paul and Barnabas: Acts 15:36-41