In these last two weeks of the Church year, the First Reading at Mass is taken from the Apocalypse, the mysterious last book of the Bible, telling the visions of John. Chapter 4 (today's reading) is about John's ecstatic vision of the coming universal homage and worship that all creation will be giving to Almighty God enthroned in glory and the unending hymn of praise all creatures will sing. Some of these words we have already taken into our Christian liturgy, because this liturgy of the earthly Church is understood as a taking-part in the heavenly liturgy. So in this way we use today's Psalm 150, the last of the psalms, because it, too, is already a hymn of praise offered to God by all creation, using all the sounds of music to offer honour and glory to God. On behalf of all living creatures, let's give praise to the Lord for all His great deeds, and take into our psalm-prayer all the sounds of our lives and our surroundings. Let all that exists give Him praise, through the music we make in our songs and prayers. Through us who have heard His word (symbolised in those four living creatures that John saw standing around the throne of God), may all the noise and chatter of our modern world somehow make music to the Lord .