Readings: Ezekiel 47:1-12, Revelation 1:9-16

Jesus Christ is a living reality, alive and present to us. “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” (1 Peter 1:8).

Though we do not see Him, we have a knowing that cannot always be explained in words yet is felt deeply in our hearts — that sense of more that exists beyond the limits of our sensory experience. A knowing that comes when we are still, and we listen.

Our relationship with God is like this: when we are silent, we are heard, because the door to our hearts is opened when we seek this holy silence. And it is in this silence that we are known. In our openness, His peace comes like the living waters that flow out from the temple of His body.

The glory of the Lord comes from the land of the rising sun, the place from which the darkness is conquered by the first rays that pour their golden beams like a flood from afar. 

This glory once made Himself known in a burning bush, in tablets of stone, and in the visions of the prophets — prophets who came after Moses and served as bridges between God’s Law and His will. They could read the signs of the times and speak not only of what was to come, but of what was already unfolding, and crossing the boundaries of His will for us.

Ezekiel saw many wondrous and astonishing things. He has revealed to the people of his time and to us now the tension between human desires at work in the world and the will of our Father in heaven.

The Lord said to Ezekiel in Chapter 36, that He would put His Spirit within us, gather us together, and bring us into our own land. God promised to deliver us from all our uncleannesses and to make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant. 

And so we know that this is fulfilled in Christ and through Christ. Our God, who in ancient days uprooted and planted, just as He who created in the beginning, is the First Cause of all and also the Sustainer — like a gardener who sowed seeds in time, who takes an active and participatory role in His creation: pruning and shaping, uprooting and planting.

The Old and New Testaments are a rich treasury of His Word, and this deposit of our faith all comes together in Jesus Christ. 

Jesus, the Word made flesh, interprets that Word for us. All things are interpreted through Him; we see with His eyes. And so we know that the temple vision was Christ Himself, and that from the heart of our Lord flow the rivers of living water — water that brings life.

The water of this world is the water for which we are never satisfied. We drink to sustain our physical bodies and soon thirst again. This physical desire is both common and necessary, yet it is also symbolic of how the world cannot by itself truly satisfy the deepest longing of our hearts for rest, fulfilment and peace.

In fact, the measuring rod is a sign of God’s temporal order, for time is the line or distance between us. As Aquinas says, “Law is a rule or measure of acts.” This divine rule draws that line and orders our movement through time. 

“The grass withers and the flowers fade, yet the word of God stands forever.” (Isaiah 40:8). Yet for each of us here, in stillness and listening in church, time becomes now. In the opening of the Book of Revelation, when it says to keep what is written in it, “for the time is near,” this speaks of a gathering together to meet Christ in the eternal now — with no time or distance separating us. 

We are here as Church, a gathering intended to be of one heart and mind, united under the will of God. This is the eschatological urgency of the Church: gathered to meet Him in the cloud, for His name’s sake, for His glory, so that His holiness may be known and visible as a light in a dark place.

Jesus said to the disciple Philip, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father” — the I AM who I AM. (Exodus 3:14). And here in our scripture reading today from the Book of Revelation, we hear echoes of that encounter between Moses and the I AM in the burning bush. The ancient Menorah, the golden lampstand that stood in the south of the Holy Tent of Meeting and the Temple, was a reminder of that Light of the Lord that entered into the history of His chosen people.

The first Menorah itself was modelled on an almond tree — the same tree whose branch Jeremiah saw in his prophetic vision, and whose blossoms appeared on Aaron’s budding rod. Almond blossoms speak of life, of God’s love, awake and watchful, as we are to be, to see His word fulfilled. In this way, the tree points to both the Father and the Son. 

The seven branches of this lampstand are now the seven lampstands in John’s vision. Trees are living fractals — each branch an exact image of the whole. So the Church, filled with the Holy Spirit (the flame of fire that came like a rushing wind to rest on each of the Apostles), becomes a flaming branch of that same Tree — the mystical body of Christ. God the Father and God the Son, together with the Holy Spirit as the one Gardener, cutting off what leads to death, pruning what remains, and grafting in what bears life.

The waters of baptism prepare us to receive this gift of Himself dwelling in us, just as the glory of the Lord once dwelt in the ancient temple. Now our bodies are that temple, made ready for Him by water and then by fire.

Jesus told the disciples they had already been made clean by His word. His breath cleansed them in His presence; His divine presence breathed on them the living waters of our baptism. 

And when the Holy Spirit came, His presence was sent into all the world. 

By His death, by His blood and the water that gushed out from His side, Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins (CCC 615) — not as a penal substitution, but as Saint Anselm taught in his book Why God Became Man through obedience, as the spotless Lamb with hair as white as wool, the Ancient of Days in our midst, dying because of our iniquity through His self-giving sacrifice, which was offered out of love for us (Jn 10:18). 

In the psalm we declare, as our brothers and sisters did long ago: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living.” (Psalm 27:13). That land is in heaven. God promises us a Kingdom not of this world — not up in the sky or across the furthest sea. 

No, Christ dwells with us now, in the Holy Spirit who is Emmanuel, God with us. He did not leave us as orphans, but He sent the helper who draws us together to live differently: to live in the world but to overcome its temporal desires and fleeting appearances — not because His creation is bad, but because by our behaviour it has been corrupted.

The point is that Jesus is our home and our homeland. The burning flame of encounter has left the physical mountain and is now wherever we gather together as a Church, for as long as we live and breathe His will for us, with Christ the King and ruler of our hearts.

Then, as we grow in holiness, we too, like the Apostles before us, can bear the fruits of the Spirit — showing love, patience, gentleness, faithfulness — the fruits that do not perish, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary above, that is the heart of Christ. 

And by this fruit we are known, and He is made known through us. The Apostles and saints — their fruit and leaves — are the food and healing for us now and for those to come.

Amen.