Today my voyage takes me to the island on which Saint John saw his vision of the End. The island is very small which has the advantage of causing it to have been left alone.
Standing on Patmos is like standing at the end of the world. If Heraclitus talked of a world of constant change, then Saint John saw a world that would be eternal and a city that would never die. His divine Logos was very different!
John was an old man by the time of the Revelation. I can see him in my mind sitting in his cave (if tradition is to be believed) remembering the God-Man who had been His beloved friend. Of all the disciples, he alone was left. He was sitting faithful, this man who was so fiery Jesus had called him a “son of thunder,” on the Lord’s Day.
And Jesus came to Him.
The old man, John, saw his friend on the Lord’s Day: the Divine Logos eternally made flesh. The Word had become a man, experienced death, and had reconciled the pain and sin of the world to God in this divine act. The Revelation is fearful and awful, but fearful because it is so intensely good and full of the awe of a God who loves enough to deliver us from the world of change into a final good end.
It is easy to imagine the blue, blue sky over Patmos rolling back up like a scroll to reveal the deeper Heaven behind it. It is not as easy to imagine trying to take in the images, symbols or verbal icons, that rushed at the old fisherman. Beasts. Angels. Trumpets. Bowls of wrath. A heavenly city. The Greek of his gospel is elegant, reflecting time and a good scribe. The Greek of Revelation reads like a man overwhelmed by his vision.
It is that truth that overwhelms me on Patmos. The details of the Revelation are hard to understand and I shall not try to interpret them today. What is there is unmovable Vision. Reading Revelation makes me see, but my mind is not always big enough to handle the images. The words fall into my mind like great stones and, I think, form a wall at the very edge of my reason. There, someday, at the very hour of my death or (if time does not last) at the sound of the final trumpet, I will reach the wall those images form. I shall climb that wall and sit on it. Over the other side, the other side of the last bit of Revelation, I shall see the place where the Word of God lives Himself.
There His Word is eternal, because the prayer is at last answered and His Kingdom will have fully come on earth as it is in Heaven. Revelation for me, when I have stood of Patmos, marks the beginning (not the end!) of that deeper Biblical revelation. Word without end (not just world!)! Amen.