Speak Lord: Our Light

Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Easter. And the Second Reading at its Mass continues our hearing of John’s vision of the New Jerusalem related in the Book of the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation..

In the spirit, the angel took me to the top of an enormous high mountain and showed me Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down from God out of heaven. It had all the radiant glory of God and glittered like some precious jewel of crystal-clear diamond. The walls of it were of a great height, and had twelve gates; at each of the twelve gates there was an angel, and over the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel; on the east there were three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. The city walls stood on twelve foundation stones, each one of which bore the name of one of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

I saw that there was no temple in the city since the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the temple, and the city did not need the sun or the moon for light, since it was lit by the radiant glory of God and the Lamb was a lighted torch for it.

Apocalypse 21:10-14,22-23

At the end there is only God and us. Yet so often we live our lives distract by so many things… Their dust obscures the brightness of God and our communion with him.

• What obscures light and love in your life?
• What in God draws you to him?

Detail of rose window, St Leonard’s Charlecote, Warwickshire. (c) 2016, Allen Morris