Catholic Commentary
The Final Call to Hear the Spirit
22He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies.”
Revelation 3:22 concludes the seven letters to the churches with a formulaic refrain calling all believers to actively listen to the Spirit's message through the risen Christ. The shift from singular to plural—addressing "the assemblies" rather than individual churches—universalizes the preceding letters, signaling that their collective message applies to the entire Church before the apocalyptic visions begin.
Christ's final word before opening heaven itself is not a promise—it's a warning: most of us have ears but are spiritually deaf to what the Spirit is actually saying.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
In the typological sense, the refrain "he who has an ear" recalls the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 and Israel's fundamental posture before God: receptive, obedient, listening. The Church, as the new Israel, inherits this vocation of hearing at a deeper register — not merely the Torah proclaimed at Sinai, but the living Word spoken by the Spirit in the gathered assembly. In the anagogical sense, since Revelation 4 immediately follows with the throne-vision ("Come up here," 4:1), this final refrain functions as the hinge between earth and heaven, between the Church's present struggle and her eschatological destiny. Hearing is the posture that opens one to the heavenly liturgy about to be revealed.
Catholic tradition illuminates this verse at multiple levels of depth.
The Holy Spirit as Teacher of the Church
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the Holy Spirit is the Church's living memory" (CCC 1099) and that Scripture must be read "in the Holy Spirit in whom it was written" (CCC 111). Revelation 3:22 enacts exactly this principle: the Spirit does not merely inspire the text; the Spirit continues to speak through it to the living Church in each generation. The verse thus supports the Catholic insistence that Sacred Scripture is not a static deposit but a living address requiring a living Magisterium and a living People to receive it.
The Church Fathers on Listening
Origen (Commentary on Matthew) tied this refrain to the distinction between psychic and spiritual hearing: most people hear words; only those purified by grace hear the Spirit behind the words. St. Augustine (De Doctrina Christiana I.1) taught that right reading of Scripture requires caritas — love — as the interpretive key. To "have an ear" is, for Augustine, to have a heart shaped by charity, without which even the most erudite reading remains deaf.
Sensus Fidei and the Whole People
The Second Vatican Council in Dei Verbum (§8) affirms that the Spirit helps the whole Church to grow in understanding of the revealed Word. Lumen Gentium (§12) speaks of the sensus fidei — the supernatural instinct of the whole People of God to hear and receive divine truth. Revelation 3:22, addressed not to bishops alone but to "he who has an ear" — any member of the assembly — grounds this conciliar teaching in apostolic Scripture. The Spirit speaks to all, though always within the communion of the ekklēsia.
The Seven as Completeness
In Hebrew symbolic arithmetic, seven signifies fullness and completion. Seven letters to seven churches means one message to the whole Church. The theological implication, underscored by the Fathers and developed by Victorinus of Pettau in his Commentary on Revelation, is that this final refrain speaks to the Church in omni tempore et loco — in every time and place.
For contemporary Catholics, Revelation 3:22 poses an uncomfortable and bracing question: Are we actually listening? In an era of sensory and informational overload, the very faculty of attentive, receptive listening is under assault. Catholics attend Mass and hear the Word proclaimed, but the verse warns that proximity to the message does not guarantee reception. The Laodicean church, after all, had Christ speaking directly to them — and were still called spiritually deaf.
Practically, this verse invites several concrete disciplines: Lectio Divina — the ancient monastic practice of slow, prayerful reading of Scripture — is the Church's own method of cultivating the "ear" this verse demands (see CCC 2708). Regular examination of conscience about whether one's response to the Sunday homily or daily Scripture reading has produced any change in behavior, not merely emotional resonance, is another application.
The plural "assemblies" is also a corrective to privatized faith. Hearing the Spirit is not primarily a solo spiritual experience; it happens in and through the worshipping community — the Sunday Eucharist, the parish, the family. Catholics today should ask: Is my ekklēsia — my local parish, my household — truly listening, or has it grown lukewarm?
Commentary
Revelation 3:22 — "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies."
This single verse is both ending and threshold. It closes the letter to Laodicea — the final and most severe of the seven letters — and simultaneously seals the entire epistolary section of Revelation (chapters 2–3) before the apocalyptic visions of chapters 4–22 open. Understanding it requires attending both to its immediate literary function and to its cumulative theological weight.
The Formula and Its Repetition
The phrase "He who has an ear, let him hear" appears verbatim at the close of all seven letters (2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22), functioning as a liturgical refrain echoing the words of Jesus himself in the Synoptic Gospels (Matt 11:15; 13:9, 43; Mark 4:9, 23; Luke 8:8; 14:35). The Johannine tradition has transplanted this dominical saying into the mouth of the risen, glorified Christ speaking through his Spirit. That the formula is identical across all seven letters underscores its universality: what is said to Ephesus, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea is said to all the assemblies. The plural "assemblies" (Greek: ekklēsiai) at the end of verse 22 confirms this: the letter addressed to one local church is addressed to the whole Church.
"He who has an ear"
The conditional phrasing is pointed. Not everyone who has ears does hear. The Greek ho echōn ous ("the one having an ear") implies a faculty that must be actively exercised. In the context of the immediately preceding letter to Laodicea (3:14–21), where the community is described as "lukewarm" and spiritually blind — proudly self-sufficient, unaware of their own nakedness (3:17) — the call to hear carries sharp irony. Those who believe they see clearly may be the most deaf. True hearing, in the biblical idiom, always implies obedience: the Hebrew shema (hear/obey) underlies this Greek construction, as it does throughout the Johannine and Synoptic traditions.
"What the Spirit says"
In the seven letters, it is the risen Christ who dictates to John (1:11), yet the letters consistently close with the formula attributing the message to "the Spirit." This is not a confusion of persons but a profound Trinitarian disclosure: the words of the glorified Son are communicated through and as the words of the Spirit. Origen noted that the Spirit speaks in Christ and Christ speaks the Spirit — they are not two voices but one divine speech. This dynamic anticipates the Paraclete passages in John's Gospel (John 14:26; 16:13–15), where the Spirit "will not speak on his own authority" but will glorify the Son by taking what is the Son's and declaring it.