Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

The book of Revelation features plagues, earthquakes, disasters, famines, and battles both in heaven and on earth. All of this mayhem is meant to signal two very basic spiritual facts: the world is under divine judgment and the church of Jesus Christ will always be opposed by the power of sin. The great good news of the book of Revelation is that God's judgment conduces to a transformed world and that the church of the risen Lord will triumph. Despite all of the darkness of history, God is writing a divine comedy.

"As John looks into the throne room of heaven, he sees a King holding a scroll, which stands for the meaning of history. The only one in heaven or on earth who is able to open it is the ""lamb standing as though slain,"" that is to say, Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. He, we Christians claim, is the secret, the key, the breaker of the code."

The book of Revelation is, literally, God's last word to us. It is the most populated, most exciting, most bizarre, bloodiest and most mysterious book in the Scriptures. I believe that the best interpretation is the simplest: it reveals that Jesus Christ is the Lord of history and that those who follow him are, despite all trials, on the winning side.