Solemnity of All Saints · superseding the Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time
LECTIONARY № 667 · SOLEMNITY · SUNDAY CYCLE A
These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.
— Revelation 7:14
Six of the seven seals have been broken. The sixth ended with the sky rolled up like a scroll and the kings of the earth hiding in caves, and with a question left hanging in the air: the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?Revelation 7 is an interlude wedged between the sixth seal and the seventh — the book stops the countdown to answer that question before it goes on.
What happens
"I, John, saw another angel come up from the East, holding the seal of the living Theos. He cried out in a loud voice to the four angels who were given power to damage the land and the sea, 'Do not damage the land or the sea or the trees until we put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our Theos.' I heard the number of those who had been marked with the seal, one hundred and forty-four thousand marked from every tribe of the children of Israel. After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands… Then one of the elders spoke up and said to me, 'Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?' I said to him, 'My master, you are the one who knows.' He said to me, 'These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.'"
What to notice
The whole passage turns on a mismatch between two senses. John hears a number and then sees a crowd, and the two do not agree. He hears one hundred forty-four thousand — twelve times twelve times a thousand, sealed from every tribe of the children of Israel, and the tribal muster in Revelation 7:5–8 is laid out in the format of an army roster. Then meta tauta eidon, "after this I saw" — and what he sees is a great crowd that no one was able to number, drawn from every nation and race and people and tongue. This is the manoeuvre the book already ran in Revelation 5:5–6, where John is told that the Lion of Judah has conquered and turns to see a Lamb standing as though slaughtered.The audio track announces one thing and the video track shows another, and in this book the vision is the interpretation of the number. The angel comes up apo anatolēs hēliou, from the rising of the sun — anatolē is also the Septuagint's messianicbranch, the word behind Luke 1:78. What he carries is a sphragis, a seal: the signet pressed to mark ownership, and it goes on the forehead — where, six chapters later in Revelation 13:16, the beast will put its counterfeit. The forehead is contested real estate in this book; the question is never whether one is marked but whose mark one carries. The palm branches, phoinikes, carry three histories at once — Tabernacles in Leviticus 23:40, the Maccabean rededication in 2 Maccabees 10:7, the road into Jerusalem in John 12:13. Harvest festival and victory parade in the same hand. The elder's question is a set piece: "My master, you know" is word for word the exchange of Ezekiel 37:3, where Theos asks whether the dry bones can live. The formula signals that the answer coming is a resurrection answer. And then the sentence that does not work — eleukanan autas en tō haimati, "they whitened them in the blood." Blood does not whiten; Isaiah 1:18 runs the other way. Revelation writes the impossible chemistry on purpose, because whiteness here is not the absence of a stain but the presence of a death.
Psalm 24 is an entrance liturgy — a text performed at a gate, almost certainly antiphonally, with pilgrims outside and priests within. Three movements: the world belongs to Yahweh (Psalm 24:1–2), the entrance requirement (Psalm 24:3–6), and the great call for the gates to lift their heads (Psalm 24:7–10). The lectionary reads the first two and stops at the door, which is exactly right for a day about who goes in.
The selected verses
Psalm 24:1bc–2."Yahweh's are the earth and its fullness; the world and those who dwell in it. For he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers." Psalm 24:3–4ab."Who can ascend the mountain of Yahweh? or who may stand in his holy place? One whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean, who desires not what is vain." Psalm 24:5–6."He shall receive a blessing from Yahweh, a reward from Theos his savior. Such is the race that seeks him, that seeks the face of the Theos of Jacob."
What to notice
The question is mi ya'aleh b'har Yahweh — "who shall go up the mountain of Yahweh?" The verb alah is the pilgrimage verb (one always goes up to Jerusalem regardless of the map) and it is also the root behind olah, the whole burnt offering, the sacrificenamed for the fact that all of it goes up. The word for making the pilgrimage and the word for the offering that is entirely consumed are the same three letters, and a psalm asking who may ascend is not asking a merely geographical question. The requirement arrives as a matched pair: n'qi khappayim u-var levav, clean of palms and pure of heart — the visible and the invisible, what a bystander can check and what only Theos can. Then a stranger third clause: asher lo nasa la-shav nafsho, "who has not lifted his soul to emptiness" — shavbeing the very word of the third commandment, you shall not lift up the name of Yahweh la-shav. Many read it as a self-imprecation formula: has not sworn by a worthless thing. Either way the verb is nasa, to lift: the psalm asks who may go up on the strength of what they have lifted up. And Psalm 24:6 chimes in a way English cannot hold — zeh dor doreshav, "this is the generation of those who seek him," where dor and doresh share their consonants. A generation defined not by when it was born but by what it is looking for. Notice, finally, what the answer is made of: clean hands, a pure heart, no oath sworn on nothing. It is a moral qualification, checkable in principle — and it is about to sit beside two entirely different answers to the same question.
1 John is written into the aftermath of a split: people have left the community claiming a higher knowledge, and the letter keeps hauling the argument back to what can actually be known, now, by ordinary members. Its favorite move is to name something already true and refuse to let it be traded for something more impressive.
What happens
"Beloved: See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of Theos. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are Theos's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure."
What to notice
The opening word is an exclamation and a strange one: potapēn agapēn dedōken hēmin ho patēr.Potapos began life meaning "from what country?" — a word about foreignness. "See what foreign kind of love the Father has given us." The love is not beingpraised for its size; it is being marked as coming from somewhere else. Then John interrupts his own sentence: that we should be called children of Theos — kai esmen, "and we are." The two words are grammatically unnecessary and clearly could not be left out. He has just used a verb that might imply a courtesy title, and he stops to close that door. The line about the world is doing logical work, not complaining: the world does not know us because it did not know him.The community's invisibility is offered as evidence rather than as a difficulty — a group the world found obviously impressive would have something to explain. And then the honest sentence at the center of the day: oupō ephanerōthē ti esometha, "it has not yet been made visible what we shall be." For a feast honoring the saints, the reading chosen says the finished state is undisclosed. What is known is the mechanism, and it is startling — homoioi autō esometha, hoti opsometha auton kathōs estin, "we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." Not: we shall be made like him and therefore able to see. The seeing is the cause and the likeness is the effect. The last verse hands the day back to the psalm: hagnizei heauton, "purifies himself," is a cultic word — the purification a pilgrim undergoes before going up.Psalm 24 asked for clean hands at the gate; 1 John 3:3 is that requirement in Greek, attached to a hope rather than to an inspection.
Matthew 4 ended with crowds streaming in from Galilee and the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan. Matthew 5:1 says he saw the crowds and went up the mountain, and his disciples came to him. The crowd stays at the bottom; the disciples climb — and they are all still listening at the end, since Matthew 7:28 reports the crowds astonished. The Sermon is addressed to disciples and overheard by everyone.
What happens
"When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the reign of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see Theos. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of Theos. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the reign of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.'"
What to notice
He went up the mountain and then ekathisen, he sat down. Sitting is the posture of authority here, which is why Matthew 23:2 speaks of scribes occupying the chair of Moses; and the mountain is a quotation. Moses went up a mountain to receivecommandments. This one goes up to give them, and sits down to do it.Makarios is not "happy" — in classical Greek it described the condition of the gods, and in the Septuagint it renders ashrei, the word that opens Psalm 1. It is a pronouncement about someone's actual condition, not a wish for their improvement, and the Greek has no verb at all: makarioi hoi ptōchoi tō pneumati is, word for word, "blessed the poor in spirit." There is no are. The sentence hangs a label on people standing there. And ptōchos is strong: Greek kept penēs for the working poor, the man with a trade who is short of money, while ptōchos comes from ptōssō, to crouch, to cower — the beggar with nothing. "Poor in spirit" is not poverty softened into piety; it is the destitute crouch, transferred inward. Then the tense pattern, which is exact: the first beatitude and the eighth both say theirs is the reign of heaven, present tense, while every promise between them is future — a present-tense frame around a future-tense middle. Those middle futures are nearly all passives with no stated agent (paraklēthēsontai, chortasthēsontai, eleēthēsontai, klēthēsontai) — divine passives, the Jewish way of putting Theos in a sentence without naming him. Every one of the promises has the same unnamed subject. Two words repay a second look: penthountes is from penthos, not general sadness but the formal grief of bereavement; and in Matthew 5:6 the grammar is odd on purpose — Greek hungers for some of a thing with a partitive genitive, but Matthew writes the accusative, tēn dikaiosynēn.They are hungry for the whole of justice, and the case ending is what says so.
How They Fit Together
One question asked twice, and three answers the day declines to harmonize
The mechanism: we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is
The lectionary has done something unusually tidy today: it has put two questions and two answers on the table, and the two questions are the same question.
Psalm 24 asks it at a gate: mi ya'aleh — who goes up? Revelation asks it in front of a throne, and the elder's phrasing is the same enquiry in the perfect tense: who are these, and where did they come from? One asks about the requirement, the other about the crowd that has already met it. And the answers are three, and the day sets them side by side without smoothing them into one.
The psalm's answer is a moral qualification. Clean hands, a pure heart, no oath sworn on nothing. It is checkable, at least in principle; it is the sort of answer a gatekeeper can use. This is not a cynical thing for a psalm to say, and the day does not repudiate it.
Revelation's answer is a laundry that cannot work.They washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. The chemistry is wrong and is wrong deliberately. Nobody in that crowd is described as having qualified; they are described as having come out — hoi erchomenoi ek tēs thlipseōs tēs megalēs, present participle, the ones coming out of the great pressure, as if the procession is still emerging while John watches.
And Matthew's answer is not a qualification at all. Run down the list and notice how much of it is not a virtue: poor, mourning, meek, hungry, persecuted, insulted. Mercy and peacemaking and cleanness of heart are dispositions one could work at; destitution and bereavement are not. Half the Beatitudes describe things that happen to people rather than things people do, and Matthew declares those people makarioi with no verb, no condition, and no waiting period.
Which is why 1 John is placed where it is. If the criterion is not achievement, the obvious question is what actually produces the likeness — and 1 John 3:2 answers without any moral machinery at all: we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.Sight is the cause. Resemblance is the consequence. And then, in the very next breath, the letter releases no one from effort: everyone who has this hope purifies himself. The purity is downstream of the hope, which is downstream of the promised seeing.
One more thread runs through the whole day: the number and the crowd. John hears a sealed twelve-by-twelve-by-a-thousand out of the tribes of Israel, looks up, and sees an uncountable multitude out of every nation and language. The book has done this before — announcing a Lion and showing a Lamb — and the rule holds both times: what he is told is true, and what he sees is what it means. On a feast that commemorates by definition the people nobody has counted, that mismatch is the whole point. The Church keeps a calendar of namedsaints and then, once a year, admits the calendar is a rounding error.
A Question to Sit With
The elder asks John who the people in the white robes are, and John, who has been shown more than most, says only: my master, you are the one who knows. It is a good answer, and it is the honest one for today. I do not know the names of most of the people this feast is for, and neither does anyone else — that is what the feast is. Whose sanctity have I failed to notice because it did not arrive with a name, a title, or a story anyone thought worth recording?