The seven seals

John saw a lamb standing, as if slain, in the center of the throne and understood that it is the symbol of the Risen Christ at the center of the government of the universe. A lion of Judah had been announced, but with a turn of the scene a lamb appeared. What purpose did the lion have? It is the change of perspective. A lion was expected, but a lamb appeared. How was God victorious? Killing enemies? NO. Letting himself be killed. The Lamb is in the center of the throne to indicate that at the center of God's power is the mystery of the crucified and risen Christ. He won by dying. He is a conqueror by losing his life. He becomes the essential model that John proposes to the Christian community in difficulty.

The book of Revelation is a work of comfort and encouragement. And to encourage and comfort, it offers the fundamental model that he is the suffering but victorious Christ; and reiterates that to be victorious one has to go through the same situation, being consistent like Him to the end. Resistance is the great intention of John in writing the book of Revelation.

And to show how the project of God fully revealed in the dead and risen Christ develops throughout history, John chose septenaries as a descriptive scheme. It is a series of seven pictures. Imagine that I show you seven slides from a trip I did. Or synthesized all the all the experiences that I did in seven images. It is not the trip itself, but there are seven images that summarize it. Or imagine that you visit a gallery, entering a room in which seven paintings are exposed.

We start from one end and we see four pictures that have the same dimension, all equal and symmetrical. Then we move and see a fifth a little bigger; and on the other wall we find the sixth which is a huge painting, with three main boards. And finally, we have the seventh, which is a very small painting, a miniature. We have been in the 'hall of seals.'

It's like saying that these seven pictures that we have the opportunity to see, are unified by the symbol of the seal. He who sits on the throne holds a scroll with seven seals. Every time the Lamb opens a seal, a slide is projected. We contemplate a picture. These seven seals together, that appear as seven pictures, show the history of salvation; some basic elements that characterize history. You have noticed that, in my description, the sixth frame is the largest, most enormous. In the septenary series, the sixth element is always the most important, it is the summit of the series; it is what shows the decisive intervention of God in history. That is, the saving event of Jesus Christ.

So, let's try to briefly describe these seven pictures that represent the septenary of the seals. The first four are the same, they are the same size, the same frame, the same subject. They represent four horses. Here are the famous horsemen of the book of Revelation. Four pictures of horses, characterized by different colors. The first is white, the second is red, the third is black, and the fourth is pale greenish, bruised. White is the positive color. In the book of Revelation, it is generally attributed to God, to the Risen Christ or the chosen ones. It is the color of light and it is the color of life, it is the symbol of victory and in fact, the first rider to ride the white horse is crowned the winner and he is said to have emerged victorious destined to win again.

Instead, red is generally the color of blood. It is a fiery red horse and is the image of violence, of bloodshed. The black refers to hunger, famine ... "black hunger." And the greenish is the color of the corpse, a sign of disease and death. These three horses: red, black, and greenish can bring war, famine, and plague. These are three calamities that unfortunately have always afflicted humanity. But the first horse, the white horse, represents a positive starting element.

The series does not start badly, but degenerates. Imagine seeing Adam on the first horse, created good and beautiful. But the second is Cain who has shed his brother's blood and so out of violence hunger and pestilence were born. It is a parade of forces, not of people, that mark human history. We started well, but the situation quickly worsened with a rampant and desperate situation. Evil dominates the world. What to do?

The fifth picture shows the victims; people violently murdered by an adverse power. It is as if they have been thrown under the altar, as sacrificial offering; and these victims shouted to God in a powerful voice: Why don't you intervene? “How long will it be, holy and true master, before you sit in judgment and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” Another decisive element in the historical dynamic is the prayer of the victims.

Reference is made to the righteous in the Old Testament, to the innocent victims of persecution, especially those of the time of the Maccabees. The answer is in the sixth seal. The huge painting with three panels. It is a much longer text. I made the step between the literary text and the painting. The painting may be small, the text short. And the text can be long and we figure is like a huge painting, with large panels. Three panels because there are three scenes, three boards because there are three scenes that make up the sixth seal.

In the first panel, we find a series of catastrophic phenomena. It is from these scenes that the wrong interpretation of the book of Revelation is understood as a book of destruction. What does 'catastrophe' mean? Catastrophe is a Greek word that means inversion, complete overturn. With a gesture, when I speak of change, I mean that things have changed from one way to another. With my hand, I made a 'catastrophe', a reversal. Precisely the gesture I make with my hand, in Greek if it calls ‘catastrophe’. Therefore, these catastrophic images serve to symbolize the changes, the great changes in history. When the sun is described as darkening, the stars that fall, the earthquake that destroys everything, no disasters, calamities are announced.

With this symbolic language it is intended to say that there is a radical change in the world. Things change, from 'thus' to ‘thus'. So, what does John mean? The coming of Jesus Christ caused a reversal of the situation. After the initial picture of the evil that dominates the world, and the cry of the victims, here comes the intervention that determines a catastrophe, that is, a change.

The second panel is the announcement of salvation for those who lived before Christ. There is talk of Israel, of the chosen people, and it is said that those saved are 144,000. Numbers do not have a quantitative value but a qualitative one. One hundred and forty-four corresponds to 12 x 12. To get to 144,000 it is multiplied by a thousand. Thousand is the typical divine number. It is the great number par excellence. Twelve times twelve represents the portion of Israel, multiplied by divinity. It means those who are saved. It is simply a symbolic number to say that of all the twelve tribes of Israel 12,000 people were saved. They are those marked with the seal of God.

Here again is the decisive image that John takes from Ezekiel. It is a ‘Tau’, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet; but we should not consult a current Hebrew grammar because in Ezekiel's time the 'Tau' was spelled differently than it is spelled today. It was a cross, a small cross. The ‘tau’ represents what we do when marking, for example, attendees on a list, making a small mark next to the name. And Ezekiel had spoken of marking a cross on the forehead of the elect, of the righteous. He takes the letter ‘tau’ because that sign was called that. And the image remained. We should not read it according to the most recent Hebrew, and less according to the Greek language which also has a letter ‘tau’ that becomes the ‘t’, but we have the case in the Franciscan tradition that there is the ‘tau’ = the T that represents the cross.

We have returned to the origin. It is the sign, the seal of belonging. When the bishop gives the chrism, he puts his hand on the person's head and marks a cross on his or her forehead, anointing with the sacred chrism and saying: "Receive the seal of the Holy Spirit that is given to you as a gift." He is ‘sealing’ that person. What does it mean? That closes it. The seal is a sign of belonging. It is placing the seal of the Spirit on that person to say that he or she belongs to the Lord. Even today we have preserved this very old symbol in our liturgy.

This picture of the book of Revelation describes the event of salvation for those who lived before. Christ's decisive intervention brings salvation to those who lived before and for those who lived later. But while those who lived before are symbolically quantifiable because time is limited, those that come after are not quantifiable because John knows that there is no limit to history.

And now the third panel. After the people who were numbered, John sees a huge crowd, that no one could count, from every nation, race, people and language. Again, the four elements; cosmic universality. It is the crowd of the redeemed. They are characterized by the fact of standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes. They live, they are victorious, and with palms in their hands that is the sign of victory, but also, a sign of an oasis, of water. Therefore, of the restoration of freshness, of vitality.

They cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.” Who can save us? The Lord God and the Lamb of God. Who are these? "Then one of the elders spoke up and said to me, ‘Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?’” It is a literary device to involve the reader and emphasize his inability. John says he doesn't know ... “I said to him, ‘My lord, you are the one who knows.’ And one of the elders explains to him: ‘He said to me, These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress.’” Not that they "have gone through" the great distress… They are those that have their origin in the ‘great distress.’

What is the great distress? Not the difficulties of everyone's life. The great distress, the tribulation par excellence is the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is his death and resurrection. Those who have their origin at Christ's Passover are the redeemed. “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

A provocative image because it is strange. How do you make a dress white by washing it with blood? If white remembers life, the possibility of living comes from the blood of the Lamb, that is, the fact that Christ has died. He is the model of salvation, he is the cause of salvation; with his blood, that is, with his death He gave us the opportunity to live; He made our dress white; He has brought us into communion with God. We read this scene every year on the feast of All Saints, on the first of November. Contemplating the heavenly Jerusalem, the liturgy makes us read this picture.

It is contemplation of redeemed humanity who participates in the victory and in the glory of the Risen Christ. “For this reason they stand before God’s throne and worship him day and night in his temple. The one who sits on the throne will shelter them. They will not hunger or thirst anymore, nor will the sun or any heat strike them. For the Lamb who is in the center of the throne will shepherd them.”

Here we have another catastrophe. A turning around of the situation. The lamb is the shepherd. One imagines the shepherd, big and strong, but he is a lamb. Would you put a lamb to lead a flock? Would you send a lamb against wolves? This is the model that the book of Revelation proposes. A poor and weak church, resistant to death; sure that only in the participation in the death of Christ there is victory. And when the Lamb opens the seventh seal. "When he broke open the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour." Bergman adapted the title of one of his famous films: "The Seventh Seal" taking it from here, with the evocation of heaven that cannot speak, it is in silence. But John's intention was completely different.

That silence is not a silence of God, but it is man who is silent; he puts his hand to his mouth and in front of that beauty he can only adore in silence. The summit of the love encounter is found in the silence of adoration.