Saturday, Fourth Week of Easter

It is easy to identify with the request of Philip to Jesus in today’s gospel reading, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied’. It was Saint Augustine who said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. We have come from God and we are made for God. It is only when we see God, face to face, that we will be fully satisfied, because only God can satisfy the deepest hungers and thirsts of our heart. We will see God face to face only beyond this earthly life. Saint Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, ‘Now we see as in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face’. Yet, Jesus says to Philip in the gospel reading, ‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father’. No one has revealed God more fully to us than Jesus. To see Jesus is to see God, the Father. We may not see Jesus in the way that Philip, Thomas and the other eye witnesses saw him, but we do see Jesus with the eyes of faith. Jesus, now risen Lord, comes to us through his word, through the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, through one another. There is a real sense in which we can see the Lord in the here and now, even if seeing him ‘face to face’ is only possible beyond this earthly life. In so far as we keep turning towards the Lord who is always coming towards us, that deep hunger and thirst in our hearts will begin to be satisfied, that restlessness in our hearts will begin to be calmed. That is why in one of the other gospels, Jesus calls on us, ‘Come to me, all you labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest’. Here and now, the Lord, the good shepherd, can lead us to restful waters to revive our drooping spirits, giving us a foretaste of the eternal rest that is our ultimate destiny.