Robert Chisholm, Jr. Now, it's important to point out that sometimes God actually did intend prophecies to give his people a glimpse of a certain future. At other times, he was so intent on bringing a prophecy to pass as stated that he miraculously ensured that his people would act in ways that brought about its unmodified fulfillment.

At times like these, the prophets explicitly indicated God's strong intentions. One way that God indicated his strong intentionality was by adding assurances to his prophecies. These might be words stating his strong intentions, symbolic prophetic actions, or even miraculous signs.

Whenever this type of assurance accompanied a prophecy, it indicated that it would be harder for human beings to change the prophecy's outcome. Sometimes, we see other prophecies confirmed by promises in places like Amos , where God swore by his holiness; Jeremiah , where he swore by himself; and Ezekiel , where God said that judgment would come as surely as he lives. When God swore by himself, he effectively removed the possibility of human responses thwarting the outcome of the prophecy.

God's promises raised the certainty of the predicted outcome to the level of the covenant itself. As surely as God can't lie, he won't change what he's sworn by himself. The fact that God sometimes reinforced his prophecies by assurances and promises ought to comfort us, because our Christian faith is grounded in the eventual fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Most importantly, we believe there will come a day when Christ will return to earth to judge his enemies and reward his faithful followers.

We have hope that one day God will restore his creation and wipe every tear from our eyes. These prophecies have been reinforced so frequently throughout Scripture that we know they can never be revoked or reduced. One day, all these predictions about Christ's return will come true.

With this basic understanding of prophets as covenant ambassadors in mind, we're ready to look at the potential results of their prophetic work. As we've just seen, prophecies of blessing don't automatically obligate God to continue to bless his people. If at some point they turn away from him, one potential result is that God may reconsider those blessings in order to address his people's disobedience.

And in the same way, prophecies of judgment should generally be seen as warnings for those who claim to be God's people. Prophetic warnings explain what God will do if the people continue in their sinful ways. And these warnings are given ahead of time because God is merciful — he wants to give his people an opportunity to repent, and to avoid the consequences of their disobedience.

In this sense, most prophecies of judgments are extensions of God's benevolence to his people. They are intended not to give people forewarning of unavoidable doom, but to motivate them to change their ways. Scripture demonstrates at least five ways that the potential results of a prophecy might be affected by the responses of its recipients. First, sometimes God revoked a prophetic warning or offer. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.

Who knows? He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing Joel Even though Joel had prophesied judgment on God's people, he understood that there was still hope.

Heartfelt repentance might change the outcome of the prophecy. Second, the blessing or curse that had been prophesied could also be delayed. For example, in 2 Kings , Isaiah prophesied that King Hezekiah would die of illness. In response to this prophecy, Hezekiah wept and prayed and asked God to remember his faithful service. So, God delayed his death by 15 years. Third, sometimes God reduced the blessing or judgment he had announced.

For instance, 2 Chronicles tells the story of the prophet Shemaiah, who announced that God would allow Egypt to destroy Israel. When Rehoboam and the leaders of Israel heard this, they humbled themselves.

So, God reduced his judgment against them. Instead of being destroyed by Egypt, they would only become Egypt's subjects. Fourth, sometimes God actually increased the fulfillment of a prophecy. One of the most memorable times God increased the fulfillment of a prophecy is found in Daniel In this case, God had cursed his people by exiling them from the Promised Land for 70 years.

But at the end of those 70 years, they still hadn't repented of their sin. So, God increased their exile by extending it. And fifth, prophetic predictions can also be fulfilled in an unmodified way. For instance, Daniel and 33 records the fulfillment of a prophetic dream that was interpreted by Daniel the prophet. The dream predicted that King Nebuchadnezzar would be driven from his people and eat grass like cattle.

This dream was reinforced by God's prophetic words in verses 30 and 31 a year after the dream. And immediately after God's words, the prophecy came about as predicted. Now that we've compared the role of biblical prophets to ancient covenant ambassadors and looked at the potential results of their work, let's turn our attention to how the apostle John fulfilled the role of a prophet in the book of Revelation.

It's easy to see that when John wrote the book of Revelation, he was acting as God's covenant ambassador, and that his goal was to motivate the early church to unfailing faithfulness.

John constantly reminded the churches of Asia Minor about the principal dynamics that all biblical covenants share. He reminded them of God's benevolence. He stressed the requirement of loyalty. And he emphasized the consequences of blessings for faithfulness and curses for unfaithfulness.

These features appear in many ways throughout the book. But they are most clearly presented in the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3. Each letter begins with an affirmation of the greatness and benevolence of Jesus Christ. Then it draws attention to the requirement of loyalty, and offers blessings or threatens curses. As an example, consider the letter to the church in Ephesus in Revelation It begins in Revelation with a statement of God's benevolence, saying:.

These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands Revelation God's benevolence is seen in Revelation in the fact that Jesus walked among the lampstands, which represent the churches addressed in the letter.

He hadn't abandoned them, but was always with them. As the letter to the church of Ephesus continues, we find the requirement of human loyalty. For instance, in verses , Jesus praised the Ephesian church for its hard work and endurance, but criticized it for losing its first love.

He also approved of the Ephesians hatred for the practices of the Nicolaitans. After this, the letter to the church at Ephesus turns toward the consequences of the covenant. The consequence of curses for disobedience can be seen in verse 5, where Jesus threatened to remove the church's lampstand if its people failed to repent and to regain their first love. And the consequence of blessing for obedience can be seen in verse 7, where Jesus offered to bless his obedient followers with access to the tree of life.

The question sometimes comes up, if God's blessing is contingent on us doing something, does this sort of imply that our salvation in any way is contingent on our good works?

Do we in fact have some contribution to make to the positive outcome of salvation? It's interesting that those who are in the traditional Arminian and Calvinist sides of what was once a great debate, are actually in agreement that God has made us as human beings with volition, and that even the damaging effects of the Fall on us have not robbed us of our capacity for volition and our responsibility for exercising it according to God's will and ways.

Well, that means that God is constantly challenging us through commands and invitations to exercise this God-given ability. So, yes we must in many cases respond to God in the way that he has promised will bring blessing.

But where we come back then and affirm that it is really ultimately all of grace is that the capacity to respond in the appropriate way ultimately does not derive from our unaided abilities but from God's higher superintending and sovereign grace so that, yes, we do and must participate in the plan whereby blessing comes to us, but we do so in absolute dependence on God's good enabling.

Glen Scorgie]. When the apostle John wrote the book of Revelation, many churches in Asia Minor were wavering in their commitment to God's covenant. Some people within the church had even begun to doubt that Jesus would return.

Others wondered how Jesus' kingdom could possibly be growing when all they personally experienced was suffering and opposition.

So, throughout the book of Revelation, the apostle John served as God's prophet to these churches. He warned his readers of the dangers of unfaithfulness. And he gave them hope for the future to encourage them to remain faithful until the Lord returned. So far in our lesson, we've discussed the historical and theological background of the book of Revelation.

So at this point, we're ready to look at its literary background. How did the book of Revelation compare to other writings of the period? We'll explore the literary background of Revelation in two steps. First, we'll compare the book of Revelation to the genre of Old Testament prophecy. And second, we'll compare it to the specific type of biblical prophecy known as "apocalyptic literature.

The Bible contains many different types or genres of literature: historical narrative, law, poetry, wisdom literature, epistle, prophecy, and others. Each genre has its own literary conventions and ways of communicating. Historical narrative communicates in a more straightforward fashion than poetry.

Epistles or letters are even more direct, and often tell their readers how to apply biblical teachings to specific circumstances. Differences like these are important to keep in mind as we read the Bible. After all, it's much easier to understand what a passage teaches if we first understand how it teaches. So, in order for us to make sense of the book of Revelation, one of the important things for us to do is properly identify its genre. It's important to identify the genre of biblical books because each literary genre has its own conventions and styles that lay claim to how it communicates its message.

For instance, if I were to read a receipt from my grocer, I would read it very differently with very different expectations than I would say a letter from my daughter. Likewise, when we go into the Bible and we read biblical texts, we find that biblical texts are written in particular genres. So if I read a legal text, for instance from the book of Moses, I'll read it with certain expectations and giving a mind to the certain conventions and the rules that are placed on that genre.

These would be very different from reading for instance Proverbs, which tend to be pithy wisdom sayings drawn from experiences in life or even from God's Word. I'll also read these very differently than I'll read for instance a psalm of lament in which God's people lament the suffering that they're undergoing.

So when we consider a text in the Bible, we have to consider a genre so that we can understand what sort of conventions, what structures, what devices the author had in its toolbox as he was communicating his message to God's people. When we rightly understand how the text is put together, we can more clearly understand what the text is communicating to us.

Scott Redd]. There are different genres or different kinds of writings in Scripture. So you have narratives which normally you shouldn't allegorize. You shouldn't take them as symbols because these are true accounts of events that happened. So you can look for the moral of the story, but you're not trying to turn it into a series of symbols. David's five smooth stones don't represent different things; Goliath experienced the first of those smooth stones in a very realistic manner.

But when you're looking at other kinds of writings in the Bible, you have poetry where it takes what we might call poetic license — there's a lot of metaphor, a lot of imagery.

Most of the prophets before the exile prophesied in poetry, so their language is rich in imagery and symbolism. The book of Revelation carries on that tradition, even though it's not primarily in poetry, it carries on the prophetic tradition of using a lot of symbolic imagery. It's explicit even in telling us that sometimes. For example, in Revelation , it explains what some of the symbols mean.

So Revelation is full of symbols and we need to understand it that way because that's the way God inspired it, that's the way God intended for us to understand it as.

The genre of the book of Revelation can be broadly identified as prophecy. In fact, the apostle John specifically called it a prophecy in Revelation As we've seen, biblical prophecy sometimes involved predictions of the future. But more than anything else, it was a message from God to his people that was intended to motivate them to faithfulness. We'll examine the genre of biblical prophecy in two ways.

First, we'll look at its characteristics. And second, we'll consider the various types of fulfillments of prophecy found in Scripture. Let's begin with the characteristics of prophecy. Biblical prophecy has many different characteristics, and we don't have time to mention them all. So, we'll focus on just two of its most important features, beginning with its typical forms. Because the book of Revelation fits within the biblical genre of prophecy, it will help for us to summarize some of the typical forms prophecy took in the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament, a prophecy could be a message of rebuke to God's people, or an oracle of woe or judgment on his enemies, a proclamation of blessing for obedience, a promise of vindication for those faithful to the covenant, a declaration of God's plan for redemption, a prayer or conversation between a prophet and God, and, on occasion, a prediction of future events.

One of the most common forms of Old Testament prophecy was a lawsuit, in which the vocabulary of the prophecy mirrored the legal language of the courtroom. Typically, God was presented as summoning disobedient Israel into court in order to be judged. These lawsuits usually stressed the kindness of God and threatened judgment if Israel continued to disobey. Sometimes, they even offered to reward faithfulness and repentance with blessings. Frequently, predictions of the future were set in the context of these threats of judgment and offers of blessing, indicating that the predictions were conditioned upon the people's response to the prophecy.

In many respects, John's prophecies in the book of Revelation functioned in the same ways as the prophecies of the Old Testament. A second feature of Old Testament prophecy is that it makes frequent use of imagery to convey its meaning. The term imagery can have a wide range of meaning. But when we use it to describe prophecy, we're referring to language that describes things in ways that incite imaginative sensory experiences.

Essentially, imagery highlights the ways we can imagine seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or touching something. For example, in Jeremiah 18, the prophet Jeremiah used the image of a potter forming a lump of clay to explain that God has the right to shape Israel in whatever way he wants.

And in Ezekiel 37, Ezekiel used the image of a valley filled with dry bones to describe the spiritual lifelessness of God's people. Then he brought them hope by explaining that the bones came together to form living human beings again. And the book of Revelation makes frequent use of imagery too. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword.

His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance Revelation These beautiful images of Jesus highlight his great power and authority. His voice has the power of the sound of a great waterfall; he holds in his hands seven stars, symbolizing kingly authority; and his face shines brilliantly as he gives light to the world.

We find similar images throughout the book of Revelation. We read of many-headed beasts with horns and crowns, angels with trumpets and bowls, songs and cries for vengeance, the eating and tasting of scrolls, horses and riders, mountains, and even a city descending from heaven.

In fact, it would be hard to find a paragraph anywhere in the book of Revelation that didn't contain some type of imagery. One of the complex things in the book of Revelation is that there is indeed a mixture of symbolic terms along with more literal terms. And when you see the symbolic terms, very often they're actually interpreted for us. So for instance, in chapter 1 when Jesus refers to — in the description refers to — seven lampstands and seven stars, later they actually say what the seven lampstands and the seven stars are.

So then you know you're definitely dealing with symbols, which is very helpful. There's other times when things are described in ways that are surprising and are hard to conjure up in some sort of literal image. So you'll have a beast with seven heads, and then you see that later on they'll talk about the seven heads or the seven hills, and that's when you can see that as you're moving away from something that looks visually much like you would anticipate in the real world, that you're moving into something much more symbolic.

David W. The book of Revelation draws a lot of its imagery from the Old Testament. And this means that our familiarity with Old Testament prophecy can help us recognize imagery in Revelation. And more than this, it can even help us interpret Revelation's imagery, since Revelation and the Old Testament often use the same images in the same ways.

Recognizing imagery throughout the book of Revelation doesn't mean that we have to interpret Revelation allegorically, or that we're spiritualizing its meaning. On the contrary, recognizing literary features like imagery is a part of our normal strategy of grammatical, historical interpretation. After all, if John intended to speak metaphorically, then it would be a huge mistake to interpret his words in woodenly literal ways.

Responsible readings of the book of Revelation acknowledge its images, and interpret them according to normal literary conventions. Now that we've introduced some of the important characteristics of prophecy, let's focus on the types of prophetic fulfillments we see in Scripture.

Prophetic fulfillment is a very complicated subject. But for the purposes of this lesson, we can speak of three types of prophetic fulfillment. First, prophecies may be fulfilled in a direct manner. When most people think about prophecy being fulfilled, the first thing that comes to mind is direct fulfillment. Prophecies can be directly fulfilled when the events they predict come to pass as stated. For instance, in Jeremiah , Jeremiah announced that Judah would fall to the Babylonians and become a desolate wasteland for 70 years.

And according to 2 Chronicles , this is precisely what happened. Second, there can also be contingent fulfillments of prophecy. A contingent fulfillment occurs when the outcome of a prophecy is somehow modified in light of the way human beings respond to the prophecy. We've already seen that the outcomes of prophecies may be modified by the responses of their recipients. When this happens, we can say that the results were contingent on the responses of the people.

This is what we have in mind when we speak of contingent fulfillments of prophecy. For instance, in 2 Samuel , the prophet Nathan warned David that God was going to kill David because he had committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband Uriah. In response to this prophecy, David repented. Because he repented, God reduced the judgment on him by sparing his life. But God still took the life of David's son and brought calamity on David's family.

Third, prophecies can have typological fulfillments. For the purposes of this lesson, we'll define typology as:. The treatment of past persons, institutions or events in Scripture as foreshadows that prefigure later persons, institutions or events.

But where Adam sinned in the garden bringing sin and death on humanity, Jesus obeyed bringing life and justification for believers in him. So a typological fulfillment of prophecy is one in which the things that the prophecy states directly are foreshadows of future events. This verse in Hosea wasn't predicting the coming of the Messiah. In fact, the prophecy was looking back in history to say that God had redeemed Israel from Egypt during the Exodus. But typologically speaking, this passage was fulfilled again in Jesus' day because the Exodus was a pattern that prefigured the life of Israel's great Messiah.

New Testament writers understood that some Old Testament prophecies had already been fulfilled even before they wrote their New Testament books.

But they still felt free to point to greater typological fulfillments in their own day. Having compared Revelation to the genre of prophecy, we're ready to address the sub-category of prophecy known as apocalyptic literature. We'll explore the nature of apocalyptic literature first by looking at its characteristics, and second by summarizing its historical development.

Let's begin with the characteristics of biblical apocalyptic literature. Apocalyptic literature is complex, and may be summarized in various ways. In these lessons, we'll define biblical apocalyptic literature as:. Highly symbolic literature that reports divine revelations, usually received through private disclosures, about the interactions among natural, preternatural and supernatural realities, and their impact on the past, present and future.

This definition is rather detailed, so we should take the time to explain it. First, let's consider the fact that biblical apocalyptic literature is highly symbolic. Broadly speaking, a symbol is a sign or other representation that points to something beyond itself.

For example, words are symbols that represent things like ideas, objects, actions, attributes, and so on. National flags are symbols of countries. And the cross is a highly recognizable symbol for the Christian religion. The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches Revelation In the context of this verse, John had received a vision of Christ, in which the Lord was holding stars in his right hand and walking among lampstands.

But the stars and lamps were symbolic. They represented angels and churches. The key to discerning legitimate symbols and interpreting them in the book of Revelation without falling into an allegorical approach that really doesn't do justice to the meaning as God intended in the Word really is threefold. First, we need to recognize that so much of the symbolism in Revelation is already given in the Old Testament Scriptures, especially in the visions of Daniel and Ezekiel and Zechariah.

So God was preparing a kind of symbolic vocabulary for his people already, and John is drawing heavily on that. Secondly, we also need to pay attention to the other parts of Scripture that speak in a more, you might say, straightforward way. We interpret the visions and the symbols in the book of Revelation in the light of the historical narratives that are given to us, for example, in the Gospels, or the doctrinal sections that we find in the Epistles.

And so we compare what are sometimes more difficult texts of Scripture, the visions of Revelation, with the clearer texts, the more straightforward texts.

And then thirdly, we need to take account of the promise given in the very first of the seven blessings in the book of Revelation that the one who reads it aloud and those who hear it can receive, take to heart, and keep the words; they can understand it. These are not clues and codes that would have been closed to them in their first century context. We want to take seriously the fact that this was actually given to our first century brothers and sisters and not just to us now in the twenty-first century, and they could understand it, they could grasp it, even just by just hearing it read aloud and get the message and receive the blessing.

Dennis E. Biblical apocalyptic literature makes frequent use of symbols. Some symbols are largely descriptive, like when an author chooses symbols that are visibly similar to what he's observed. For instance, in Daniel , Daniel recorded a vision of a beast that looked like a lion with the wings of an eagle. The lion and the wings were descriptive because they communicated the creature's actual appearance.

And they were symbolic because they also communicated its nature. The symbol of the lion implied that the creature was powerful and fearsome. And the wings on the lion probably associated it with Babylon, which often portrayed winged lions in its art. In other cases, a symbol may be devised in order to illustrate a point. For instance, in Joel , God described invading armies as locusts. The armies didn't look like locusts, but they behaved like locusts. They were an unstoppable mass that devoured everything they desired.

Still other symbols are used because they are traditional representations of things or ideas, similar to a country's flag. For instance, in Revelation , John received a vision of Jesus that was highly symbolic. Jesus appeared as a human being dressed in a long robe with a golden sash around his chest. His face shone like the sun. His hair was white. His eyes blazed like fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace.

His voice was like rushing water. He had a double-edged sword coming out of his mouth. He held seven stars in his hand. And he stood among seven lampstands. These details recalled symbols and imagery from the Old Testament, and therefore implied something about Jesus.

For instance, his white clothes and hair, and his blazing face recall the description of God in Daniel The lampstands recalled the tabernacle and temple furnishings, indicating that Jesus was still present with his people just as God had been present with them in his special houses of worship in the Old Testament.

And the stars recalled Old Testament descriptions of kings and other human leaders, as in Numbers , Isaiah , and many other places. So when Revelation speaks of stars as angels that represent churches, it's because Jesus was revealing his present spiritual reign as King over all creation.

From a human perspective, Rome threatened to control the fate of the church. But the symbol revealed that Jesus held complete power and authority over the church in his hand.

Apocalyptic writings often contain images and symbols that modern readers find difficult to understand. But most of the symbols in the book of Revelation weren't confusing to John's original audience, because they were drawn from the Old Testament and from the world around them.

Their purpose wasn't to confuse John's readers, but to communicate truth to them in a compelling, memorable way. A second characteristic of biblical apocalyptic literature is that it reports divine revelations.

Biblical apocalyptic literature is inspired by the Holy Spirit, just like the rest of Scripture. It's part of God's infallible, fully reliable, and authoritative Word to his people. It reports true revelations that were given to human authors either by God himself, or through his perfectly trustworthy angelic messengers. Biblical apocalyptic literature isn't speculative. It's not a human author's best guess. On the contrary, it's God's true communication to his people that reveals his intentions toward creation.

Third, the divine revelations reported in biblical apocalyptic literature tend to have been received through private disclosures. The word apocalypse itself means "uncovering" or "disclosure. But unlike some other miraculous revelations, as when God appeared to the entire nation of Israel as a pillar of cloud in Exodus 13, biblical apocalyptic disclosures tended to be received by solitary individuals.

Prophets received dreams. They heard voices or sounds. They saw visions. They were visited by angelic messengers. They had experiences that seemed to take them out of their bodies.

Sometimes they even met God himself. But this happened in a private setting. It was then up to the prophet, as God's messenger and ambassador, to deliver the message to God's people. The fourth characteristic of biblical apocalyptic literature we'll mention is that it deals with interactions among natural, preternatural and supernatural realities.

The word natural refers to the universe where we live, including the physical world and all its creatures. The word preternatural refers to the world beyond nature. This is the world inhabited by spirits such as angels and demons. Finally, the word supernatural means above nature, and refers specifically to God and his actions.

God is the only sovereign being who is fully above and in control of the natural realm, so he is the only being that is truly supernatural. All these realms are constantly interacting. God exerts control over the natural and preternatural realms. The angels and demons in the preternatural realm influence things that happen in the natural realm. Demons tempt us to sin. Angels guard us. And according to Scripture, angels and demons even impact international politics.

Throughout the Old and New Testaments we find glimpses into the spiritual forces that influence the history of the world. For example, in 2 Kings 6, Elisha was being pursued by the king of Aram. Eventually, the king of Aram caught up to Elisha and surrounded him, and Elisha's servant became terrified.

Although such insights into the preternatural and supernatural realms appear here and there in various parts of the Old and New Testaments, biblical apocalyptic literature heavily concentrates on these matters. For example, portions of Joel, Ezekiel, Daniel and Zechariah concentrate attention on the interactions between the natural, preternatural and supernatural realms.

And in much the same way, the book of Revelation draws attention again and again to the invisible realms of God and of the spiritual powers and authorities that God employs for his purposes.

Angels and demons have a great deal of effect on the things that happen around us because the world in which we live is a world that is controlled by God and is going somewhere according to the plan of God, and if we're going to be involved in that, if we're going to push forward in that, then we have to believe that these kinds of creatures actually exist.

One of the most fascinating aspects of this is that often when we think about the activities of angels and demons, we think in terms of our personal lives, our individual lives. And that certainly is true. It's there in the Bible, no doubt about it. But one of the big things we have to remember is that in the Bible, demonic powers especially — and at times angelic powers as well — we learn that they have been assigned dominion or rule over the nations, and so they represent these nations in the court of God.

Like Psalm 82 where it says that Yahweh presides over his great assembly and the gods, little "gods," are there with him, and these are the demons and angels and preternatural creatures who are in control of the various nations. And so in many respects, we don't realize this, but the political arena of the world is controlled not by how many people vote for this person or vote for that person or how one monarch receives the right to the throne from his ancestors and those kinds of things.

It's not that way. In reality, behind the scenes, invisible scene, there are these demonic and angelic creatures who are actually in control of the great movements of political entities in the world. Richard L. Pratt, Jr. Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition have much in common. Besides forming the content of Divine Revelation, they form what we call a single Sacred Deposit of Faith. It is called sacred because it comes from God.

It is called a deposit because it has been left to us by Christ. It deals with faith because it contains what we must believe if we are to be followers of Christ. These two together, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition form this single deposit. They may not be separated because they are both instruments of God's revelation which is one message. At least four points are shared in common by Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition: 1.

Both are vehicles for God's revelation. Both trace their origin to the Holy Spirit; Sacred Scripture is found in the sacred text and Sacred Tradition is found in the believing community. Comment on this page. Local Discussion Popout. Mystagogy on the liturgy, then, means we need to drink from the pure source of our faith tradition: the rituals by which we pray together as church.

Mystagogy is a means to contemplate the spiritual meaning of the communal ritual actions of the Mass, as well as our communal song, silence and spoken prayer. To drink from the pure source of our faith tradition, consider first contemplating the actions of the liturgy.

Imagine the ritual without word or song, just movement and silence. What does that tell us about who we are? Sing and pray acclamations from the Mass, or some of your favorite gathering songs and communion songs. Reflect on the texts of our spoken prayer: the opening prayer, penitential rite, prayer over the gifts, preface, Eucharistic prayers, prayer after communion.

These prayers are OUR prayer, not that of the presider alone. All of the liturgy is a spiritual font from which we can find nourishment.