Sixth Sunday of Easter – Cycle C
Reflecting on Rev. 21: 10-14, 22-23
We’re getting close to the end of the Easter season, which means we’re getting close to the end of the Book of Revelation, which we only hear in the Easter season, except for the Feast of All Saints. What a mysterious and beautiful book it is. Sadly, many Christians waste their precious years poring over its more enigmatic sections, looking for codes to the day and the hour of the Second Coming. That’s not what it’s about, but people throughout time keep identifying the villains of their own day as the Anti-Christ.
Now, I’ve had my own suspicions of some figures in our time. Jeff Bezos, for example, gets my vote, because Amazon has so taken over our purchasing practices that if you don’t happen to have a computer, or the right credit card, you won’t be able to buy things nearly as easily as the rest of us. That evokes, in my brain, the many references in Revelation of those with the number 666 on their foreheads. These are the ones who have bent the knee to the Anti-Christ, and are the only ones who can buy or sell (Rev. 13:16-19).
I’m only half-serious, of course. The Anti-Christ referenced in Revelation was the Emperor Nero, and those with the number 666 were all the people—Christians among them—who reverenced him in order not to be murdered. Revelation isn’t a prophecy of a figure to come. It’s about the insane sociopath on the throne in Rome in the last years of the first century AD.
But, above all, it’s about our future with Christ. The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!” We long for that day. Come, Lord Jesus.
What temptations in the modern world make it hard to hear the voice of Jesus?
Kathy McGovern ©2025