Please read this passage before reading the homily.
My sisters and brothers,
The book of Revelation (Apocalypse): why is it our reading for Easter? It is a book about disturbance, about opposition, about anxiety, about struggle, and about trouble: why are we using it?
On the other hand, it is more, a book of victory. In this book, God is seated on God’s throne: all is well; Christ, the Lamb of God., has conquered and is alive. The reign of God and God’s Christ has begun. Death is destroyed and life is always alive.
Although now we have disturbance, opposition, anxiety, struggle, and troubles, Christ, and we with Christ, have won the victory.
Yes, indeed, the book of Revelation proclaims that Christ has won the victory, that Christ is Lord, that Christ has triumphed over war and death, and that Christ reigns forever in the eternal kingdom with his Father.
For us who suffer less that the people of Ukraine struggle, we have to remember that Christ and his Father govern our lives and control our destiny and the destinies of everyone else in the world.
Christ is the first and last, the dead one who is living. The one who is first and the last has the totality of all creation, including all the dead and all the living of every age of the world. The first and the last also means that Christ has the totality of God’s divinity in him.
This Christ has triumphed over every war and over all the sufferings of all the peoples of the world. In this victory of Christ, we share even now as well as in the fulness of God’s Kingdom.
The book of Revelation was written to encourage us in our troubles. Christ has conquered and we have conquered with Christ. This is a good book for Easter.