Who are those trees?

As the Liturgy continues its journey through the book of Revelation, today’s first reading finds us in the book’s eleventh chapter -- and the vivid, piled-up images have not gotten any easier to understand.

As mentioned before, there are at least four dimensions to many of the prophecies and symbols in the book of Revelation. Unfortunately, too many people consider only one or two dimensions.


The most popular dimension in which people try to understand the book of Revelation is the trickiest: the book of Revelation as a prophecy of the future, most especially the end-time.

It is certainly an exciting dimension to consider. Many books have been published containing explanations of how the prophecies of Revelation (and the rest of Scripture) correlate with current events and containing details almost like a movie script that depict the rise and fall of the Antichrist and other events leading to the Last Judgment.

These books are indeed exciting to read and often inspire people to reform their lives in anticipation of Christ’s imminent, second coming (which is good, all things being equal), but the books inevitably prove mistaken in their correlation of current events with prophecy and, on closer examination, are found to have shortchanged the richness of the prophecies.

(That is not to say that these attempts to correlate current events with Scriptural prophecy are without any foundation: Christ may indeed return at any time and every Christian for the last two thousand years has rightly been able to see some of these prophecies resonate in the world around them – only later do we realize that the best fulfillment of these prophecies is yet to come.)

The New Testament often warns us to be careful about trying to figure out the details of God’s plan for the future. It can be a helpful exercise (within limits), but at the end of the day (and at the end of all things) we will realize that the details of what God has planned (such as the final meaning of the prophecy of the trees) are more wonderful than we could have ever imagined.


The second and third dimensions in which people (especially scholars) try to understand the book of Revelation are both historical: the situation in which both the inspired writer and the readers of the book were living, and the treasure house of Old Testament symbolism from which the inspired writer drew (sadly, some scholars actually or practically ignore the reality that the writers of Scripture were very specially inspired by the Holy Spirit and that these human words are also the Word of God).

The basic historical situation for the book of Revelation is the early Christian Church struggling through the persecutions and martyrdoms inflicted on it by the Roman Empire. The intense dangers posed by this persecution often motivated the inspired writer to make his apocalyptic symbolism especially obscure, yet no Christian of that time could fail to recognize “the great city” mentioned in this passage as pagan imperial Rome.

Today’s first reading is also piled high with wonderful, instructive Old Testament symbolism, from the olive trees of Zechariah to the plagues of Moses.


But the book of Revelation has value to us beyond whatever hints it may drop about the future or whatever it may tell us about the past: it also speaks to us about our lives and our journey in the Lord.

In a sense, the olive trees represent all those who give witness to God: in the future, in the past, and now.

We are olive trees planted in the house of God. We are lampstands before the Lord of all the earth. We are witnesses of Christ.

When we speak the word of God, when we tell the truth of Christ in love, it is indeed like fire – shining the light of truth on everything that is not of God, making clear the ultimate futility and destruction that awaits the ungodly – especially those who would harm us – in hopes that they will repent.

The power of what we say comes not from ourselves or from our own worthiness: the power and the truth comes from God.

Moreover, God confirms his own message by signs and wonders – according to his will and his plan.

There have been some among us throughout the millennia whose wills are so perfectly attuned to the will of God that such signs and wonders do indeed come “as often as they wish” - because their wishes are so perfectly aligned with God’s will and therefore his power.

(God have mercy on me – my will is still so far from the perfection to which God calls.)

This power, however, does not make us safe from harm. Indeed, God’s holiest witnesses have all suffered and many of them were killed for their witness to Christ.

The power of God and the power of Christ’s resurrection, however, can never be overcome and God will raise us all up in glory.

In the meantime, as we reflect on the past and look forward to the future, we need to conform ourselves more closely to Christ, to be better and more powerful witnesses of his love and his truth, and to rely on his grace through all the wonders and sufferings we may experience so that we may be raised up on the last day and be with him forever in the joys of heaven.