Revelation reread by looking at life, not at theories

The Revelation? It is not a text intended to reveal the future to us, but a text that speaks to us about today, about our world and our life as human beings living here. If we read it with free eyes, “it can become an inspirational text to generate a different way of human-cosmic coexistence”, writes Antonietta Potente, a Dominican nun, theologian, and author of Il miele e l'amaro (Honey and Bitterness). A Mystical-Sapiential Reading of the Apocalypse (Paoline, Milan, 2021). The title and subtitle are a direct introduction to the underlying vision of the entire volume. It is a view that turns to life and not to theories and in which the contrasts do not find their composition in an abstract unity superior to them, but remain in their reality, at times sweet and at times raw and painful.

Paying attention to the “ultimate things” for Antonietta Potente serves to illuminate today’s nature and the human world. Here emerges another peculiarity of the book, which is united by a bond of solidarity that very often we humans want to ignore.

From Revelation, therefore, new ways of being in the world and of the world can spring forth, recovering a harmony that is not the annulment of contrasts, but their pacification among human beings and with the entire cosmos. This is where the true meaning of prophecy comes in, which is to reveal new possibilities that reality does not present to those who approach it with a superficial sense, but which can only be revealed in depth.

Antonietta Potente’s book is not intended to be a rigorous and precise exegesis, but rather an approach that starts from existence and returns to it. Here, it sheds the light that comes from the inspired word on to it. What is at stake is not only the perspective of interpretation and knowledge, but also that of the entire subjectivity of the writer and the reader.

The author’s personal experiences converge in this book, having lived for many years in Bolivia, where she encountered cultures profoundly different from ours, and her feminist commitment that leads her to enhance the feelings of women to create different forms of coexistence.

To whom would you recommend this book? To those who are not satisfied with what is already given and taken for granted, but who are looking for new ways to approach reality, grasping its deepest and most real meaning.

by Giorgia Salatiello