Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Fourth Sunday of Easter

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” All the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying:

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom,
Thanksgiving and honor and power and might,
Be to our God forever and ever.
Amen.”

Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, “Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from?” And I said to him, “Sir, you know.” So he said to me, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them. They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:9–17)

By the sign of the sacred number he signifies the multitude of the elect, “whom God foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” For those who come from the nations are made to be Israel and so by right are called sons of Abraham, not by flesh but by faith in that seed which is Christ, the cornerstone, of whom the apostle said, “He is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in the place of two, and so make peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross.”

Primasius of Hadrumetum, Commentary on the Apocalypse 7.9.

Those are the ones of whom David says, “If I should count them they will be more in number than the sand,” both those who had formerly struggled as martyrs for Christ and those who contested as of late with the greatest bravery from every tribe and tongue who, by the pouring out of their own blood for Christ, made the garments white by their own deeds, and those destined to make them white; and who hold in their hands the victory-designating branches of the useful and upright and white-hearted palm trees and dance around the divine throne of the divinely derived repose, and as grateful servants properly ascribe the victory against the demons to the Provider.

Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse 7.9-10.

He says, And they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Yet it should follow that robes dipped in blood would turn out to be scarlet rather than white. So how did they become white? Because baptism enacted into the death of the Lord, as Paul in his great wisdom said, purges all filth resulting from sin and renders those who are baptized in it white and pure. But participation in the life-giving blood of Christ also bestows this favor. For the Lord says concerning His own blood that it is being poured out “for many” and “on behalf of many, for the forgiveness of sins.” Thus these serve God for ever, and God dwells among them. Indeed, the dwelling-place of God, said one of God’s saints, is where the souls of His saints continually remember Him; therefore God naturally dwells with those who serve Him day and night.

Oecumenius, Commentary on the Apocalypse 5.7–8

“Everlasting joy,” says Isaiah, “shall be upon their heads.” Well, there is nothing eternal until after the resurrection. “And sorrow and sighing,” he continues, “shall flee away.” The angel echoes the same to John: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes”; from the same eyes indeed that had formerly wept and that might weep again, if the lovingkindness of God did not dry up every fountain of tears. And again: “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death,” and therefore no more corruption, it being chased away by incorruption, even as death is by immortality. If sorrow, and mourning, and sighing, and death itself assail us from the afflictions both of soul and body, how shall they be removed, except by the cessation of their causes, that is to say, the afflictions of flesh and soul? Where will you find adversities in the presence of God? Where, incursions of an enemy in the bosom of Christ? Where attacks of the devil in the face of the Holy Spirit, now that the devil himself and his angels are “cast into the lake of fire.”

Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh 58.