Reading Revelation at Easter Time

Francis J. Moloney, SDB, studied at the Salesian Pontifical University, at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, both in Rome, and at the University of Oxford (DPhil, 1976). Foundation professor of theology at Australian Catholic University (1994–1999), dean and professor of New Testament at the Catholic University of America (1999–2005), Moloney is a member of the Order of Australia (AM) and a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA). He is currently a senior professorial fellow at the Catholic Theological College in Melbourne, Australia, part of the ecumenical University of Divinity. Moloney is also the author of more than forty books, including The Gospel of John in the Sacra Pagina series.

"The distinguished Johannine scholar Fr. Francis Moloney, taking a cue from liturgy, has produced a guide to Revelation for the Office of Readings in weeks two through five after Easter. His interpretation is a striking departure from interpretations of Revelation as a coded sequence of disasters leading to the apocalypse, an earthly millennium, and heavenly paradise for the faithful who survived the tribulations. Instead Fr. Moloney insists that salvation was mediated through the death of the Lamb from the beginning of creation. The story being told in symbolic visions is that of faithful Israel preserved in the Jewish Scripture, an account of those who obeyed Torah and gave witness to God's messiah. Certainly a picture of salvation fully realized in the Easter proclamation is better suited to Revelation's liturgical use than apocalyptic horrors. Still Moloney's imaginative reconfiguration of almost everything Christians have thought about Revelation requires time and patience."Pheme Perkins, Joseph Professor of Catholic Spirituality, Boston College