Learn to See

Fifth Sunday of Easter

May 18, 2014

John 14:1-12

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father (Joh 14:9).”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus revealed His identity as well as the Father’s. “Whoever sees me, sees the Father.” The Son and the Father are two distinct persons, but because of their extremely close union and inseparable unity, Jesus instantly turns to be the reflection of the unseen Father. In the words of St. Paul, “He is the visible image of the invisible God (Col 1:15).” Because of this, the Church also considers Jesus as the sacrament of the Father. Moreover, Jesus furthers reminds us this truth by appealing to His deeds performed among them.

Unfortunately, Philip and other disciples remained in their ignorance and kept asking Him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” The disciples have been with Jesus for quite long and surely Jesus has taught them a lot on Himself and the Father. Yet, the darkness covered their minds to see the truth. In this respect, the disciples were practically on the same ground with those Jews who accused Jesus as blasphemer and finally nailed Him on the cross. “For if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor 2:8).”

But, why did the disciples themselves fail to recognize Jesus and His true identity? The simplest explanation would be that like the other Jews, the disciples also possessed their own expectations on the Messiah.  Remember that once Nathaniel doubted, “Can anything good come from Nazareth? (John 1:46)” and Philip would assure Him, “Come and see.” Yes, the disciples eventually decided to come and follow Jesus, but were they able to see?

The first disciplines’ inability to see Jesus ends up to be the perennial problem of all Jesus’ disciples, including us today.  Like Nathaniel and Philip, we may come and follow Him, but do we see Him? Many times, we complain that God does not answer our prayers, but truthfully, He always answers our prayer. The only problem is we do not see His answer (or we do not want the answers). We like God to be like this or like that, to do this or that for us, blinding our own eyes to see the wonderful acts that God has wrought. We want God to heal our sickness immediately, but we overlook the fact that He still gives us the breath of life every morning.

Easter season becomes the right time for us to ‘come and see’ the risen Lord. Pope Francis in his Easter Homily last year reminded us that Jesus has no need to remove the giant stone, but it was so for us to come inside the tomb and ‘see’ the very proof of resurrection. Unless we come and let ourselves empty like the tomb, we never see the resurrected Lord.

Br. Valentinus Bayuhadi Ruseno, OP