⁵ The one seated on the throne then said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” He also said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” ⁶ Then he said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To those who are thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of life-giving water.

¹ Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ² down the middle of the street. On either side of the river was the tree of life with its twelve crops of fruit, yielding fruit each month. The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations. ¹⁴ “Blessed are those who wash their robes clean so that they will be free to eat from the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates.

Meditation

From The Journey of the Mind into God by St. Bonaventure; Ch 2.

[A]ll creatures in this world of sensible realities lead the spirit of the contemplative and wise person to the eternal God. Indeed, creatures are shadows, echoes, and pictures of that first, most powerful, most wise and best Principle, of that eternal source, light, and fullness; of that efficient, prototypical and ordering Art. They are vestiges, images, and spectacles offered to us so that we could contemplate God. They are divinely given signs. These creatures are prototypes, or rather copies, offered to the minds that are still uncultured and immersed in sensible things, so that through sensible things, which they do see, they may be lifted to the intelligible things, which they see not, moving, as it were, from signs to that which they signify.

[T]he created things of this sensible world signify the invisible things of God: partly because God is the origin, exemplar, and final destination of all creation, and every effect is a sign of its cause or origin, every copy is a sign of its exemplar, and the road is a sign of the final destination to which it leads; partly in virtue of their own ability to represent; partly by means of prophetic prediction; partly by means of angelic forces; and partly by means of establishing an institution. Indeed, by nature every creature is a kind of copy and likeness of that eternal Wisdom. However, specifically this applies to those creatures that, according to the book of Scripture, have been chosen by the spirit of prophecy to prefigure spiritual realities. Even more specifically, however, this applies to those creatures, in whose image God wished to appear by means of angelic ministry. But most specifically this applies to that creature, which God wished to institute as a sign: however, not as a sign as it is commonly understood, but as a Sacrament.

From all these observations we may conclude that from the creation of the world the invisible things of God are seen, being understood through those things that are made, so that they are without excuse who refuse to notice these things, or to recognize, bless, and love God in all these [sensible] things, since such people refuse to be lifted from darkness to the marvelous light of God. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, who has lifted us out of the darkness into his marvelous light, as through those lights that come to us from outside, we are being prepared to re-enter the mirror of our mind, in which divine realities shine forth.

Musical Selection

Prayer