“Behold, I make all things new.”
Throughout the Book of Revelation the language points, for the most part, toward a future time. As an apocalypse, Revelation portrays graphically God’s conquering of all evil and offers hope and consolation to Christians of all ages. But did you notice that here, when God says "I make all things new," the text has shifted from future tense to the present tense? God makes all things new--not just at some far-off distant time, but here, now, in our everyday when God is invited into our lives.
It makes sense that our author would envision God speaking in the present tense because Christian tradition asserts that God is not bound by space or time but exists at all times together (see St. Augustine's Confessions, for example).
Drawing on this traditional belief, Gregory Collins, OSB, explains one of the implications of this teaching for our own spirituality: “The inner essence of a saving act carried out by God in the past, its deepest meaning and power," Collins writes, "are capable of being rendered present.”* He goes on to describe how the moment of eucharistic consecration at mass is a present happening. We participate in mass not in a reenactment of Jesus' saving death but in the very essence of that event made present today, on this very day!
Notice too that this is the only time God is described as saying anything at all in the Book of Revelation. This is God's one dynamic utterance: “Behold, I make all things new.” What greater assurance do we need?
*Collins, Meeting Christ in His Mysteries, © 2010, Liturgical Press, pages 79-80.The author, Ms. Barbara Gawle, leads Bible studies at her parish, Incarnation Church of Wethersfield, CT. She is a CBS graduate and the 2012 recipient of the Biblical School's highest award, The Lawrence Boadt Memorial Medal.
