Gospel: John 1:43-51
When our husbands, wives or best friends speak to us, they share their inner thoughts and their inner life with us. When they share something really important and meaningful and profound, we have a choice. We may respond with faith and believe them, or we may turn away in disbelief. If we respond with disbelief, the relationship may be damaged, or get stuck. It stops there. If we respond with faith and believe our loved one, our knowledge of him or her becomes deeper. We know them and are known by them. Our relationship becomes more intimate, and our bond becomes stronger. Free, intimate, flexible relationships with loved ones are a resource for us and enrich our lives.
Something has happened in our human history. The source and fountain of 2,000 years of Church history, causes us to gather here, every Sunday, faithfully, with love and hope and the fear of God. Because God has spoken to us. God has revealed His inner life to mankind, unworthy as we are. God is invisible to us, and maybe we can only glimpse him with our mind. But, God has chosen to become one of us. He gives us a face to look at, hands and feet, wounded with the nails of the Cross to show us His love for us. He has dwelt among us and suffered in the flesh to show us that He is with us in our suffering and grief as well as in our joy. In the Son of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, God has revealed Himself and spoken to us His most intimate thought. He has told us who He is.
And so, He calls us to follow Him, to believe Him, to trust Him, to love Him, to know Him. Just as when we believe our loved ones, and become more intimate in our relationships, our belief in God’s word will deepen our knowledge and intimacy with Him. You are reading this, so maybe you have followed God, at least partly. You seek Him, you want to know Him and commune with Him. We want to hear His word in the prayers of the Liturgy, in the hearing of the Gospel, and in the consuming of His body and blood in the gifts of Holy communion. But maybe, at the same time, we feel like we don’t know God, we don’t know who He is. We hope that He exists, we hope He loves us, and we know Him a little, but there’s a whole lot of mystery. Well, do not be afraid. Relationships take time and work, and they grow deeper and more intimate as time goes on.
I’ve only been married for a few years, but I know first-hand that as I have spent more time with my loved one the more intimate our relationship becomes, the more deeply we know one another. And so, it’s no wonder we don’t know God fully and deeply. We know Him in part. And maybe we won’t know Him fully until we close our eyes in this life and open them in the next. But, a cloud of witnesses, the saints, show us the way. The more we follow Him, the more we will see. And the more we seek to know Him, the more we will find Him. As we come to know our Lord, we will become intimately united to Him as a wife to a husband, where the two become one. Then, like St. Philip, we will invite our brothers and sisters to come and see the Lord for themselves, so that they too may know the love of God and the glory of His Kingdom.
✠
Photo by James Coleman on Unsplash
