When I looked at today’s second reading, I had to reread one line over and over again. There is one word that struck me so strongly, that  I actually checked what it says in other languages and even worked with a Greek language text to make sure I understood the word.

 

Let’s look at the line. It is Revelation 22:14

 

Blessed are they who wash their robes

so as to have the right to the tree of life

and enter the city through its gates.

 

If you have not noticed which word struck me so strongly, that let me show you. “Blessed are they who wash their robes, so as to have the RIGHT to tree of life. That is a powerful word because it only appears in this context three times, all of which are in the Book of Revelation. We hear of salvation as a free gift from the Father to those who accept it, and we hear of the hopes we have of going to Heaven. We also hear of the danger of rejecting those hopes and being rejected from the Kingdom. But we rarely hear of the term the right to the tree of life, the right to the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

First, what is the tree of life? It is the tree guarded by the angels after Adam and Eve succumb to temptation and ate of the tree of good and evil. They were forbidden of eating of the tree for disaster would have come upon us, similar to what came upon the devil and all his angels. We would have to put for all eternity somewhere outside of all that humanizes us.

Hear this homily as it was delivered. 

So Adam and Eve were forbidden from the tree of life. They had no right or authority to approach it. However, the Book of Revelation highlights the fact that those who wash their robes, will not only have access to it, they will have a right to it.

 

The word used here in the original Greek, is actually stronger. The one who is victorious will have the authority,  it says, to approach the tree of life.

 

This is a teaching that is not often put forth and it is not understood by many outside of Christianity. The saved are not just people who were granted eternal life, they also have an authority granted to them when they enter the Kingdom. St. Paul warns that the saved will judge nations. At baptism, we become adopted children of that person of the Trinity we call the Father. But we become adopted children of the Heavenly Father, the creator of the world. If we were in an Earthly Kingdom and we became adopted children of the King, we would not be simply citizens in the Kingdom, we would be princes in that same Kingdom. We would have an authority that those who were not so adopted did not have.

 

That authority is a piece of the ultimate authority in the universe. This is why we must learn how to live as disciples of Christ, it is why we must avoid sin and seek forgiveness and reconciliation when we do sin, because we are not just citizens of the world, in fact we are citizens of the world, we are royalty in the Kingdom of Heaven. But we also have certain powers granted to us for the same reason.

 

One priest put it well, if we accept the powers given to us, we get to have a sense of what is behind the curtain. It is something that those who reject God do not understand.

 

If you take your passport and use it to visit another country, assuming you have the right visa, you have the permission to approach immigration. Neither the passport nor the visa give you permission to enter the country. It is authority of immigration for you to enter the country. There is one exception to this, however: Your home country.

 

Your passport gives you the right to enter the United States as a citizen of this country. Your choosing to wash your robes, which means to seek to live as children of God through the action of Jesus’ death and resurrection, gives you the right, the authority as a prince in the Kingdom of Heaven, to enter that Kingdom, to approach the tree of life.

 

Those who reject God’s ways, do not have that right. We have that right, because we are princes in the Kingdom of Heaven and our passport is our choice to live exactly as that. Agents of light to a world of darkness.

 

This passages reflects our dignity as human beings, as God’s chosen, when we live the Gospel. Who are those who do not share that dignity. St. Paul sums it up in one sentence: The “senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless” In other words, those who choose to be their own gods who want their world their way and reject any wisdom from God.  They put themselves outside the Kingdom. They choose not to be part of God’s kingdom and therefore they do not have the right to the tree of life anymore than a person who chooses to be part of ISIS has a right to be a free citizen in the United States.

 

However, the other part of this is that when we embrace our calling as Catholics, we also embrace our dignity as Catholics as well and that means royalty in the Kingdom of God.

 

This is why we must never compromise with the world, this is why we live a different set of rules from the rest of world and this is why the world will always be at war with us, because we represent the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are royalty and the kingdom of the world is at war with the kingdom of which we are princes.

 

Remember, Jesus says that our choice is not between being good or not, indeed he says that only God himself is good. Jesus teaches that our call is to be light of the world, salt of the earth or not.

 

Remember the teaching in the Book of Genesis, Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed because of their sinfulness, but because of the lack of the righteous living in those communities. Indeed, some will say falsely that the cities were destroyed because of a lack of hospitality. That is inaccurate, but it does not matter. It was not because of their sinfulness, it was because of their lack of righteous people in the city.

 

That is the principle of which Jesus speaks. You were appointed to be the righteous by virtue of the royalty bestowed on your at baptism. You have a calling to live as that royalty, not in privilege, but in dignity and action.

 

It is why we do good to others, it is not because it is the right thing to do, but because we have a calling to be agents of the Kingdom of God. If we choose not to be agents, then we have denied our heritage and our role as Baptized Catholics, that is what puts us outside of the Kingdom because we lose our rights to the tree of life.

 

As we await the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, next week, let us reflect on that one word. We have the right to the tree of life, if we life as the royal representatives of the Kingdom of God, each and every one of us.   

 

God bless you,

Fr. Robert J Carr

Fr. Carr is member of the Segundo Elo  of the Canção Nova Community. He is the pastor of Holy Trinity Quincy, MAand is the editor of this blog. He is the author of several books, blogs and hundreds of videos all of which you may find on Youtube.  You can follow him on twitter as @frbobcarr and on Google plus as+FrRobertCarr. Thoughts, comments on the homily? Let us know at Facebook