17 May 2014
Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Helping to end Philip’s confusion, Jesus says to the apostles “whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” From the very beginning of John’s gospel, the closeness of Jesus to the Father is hammered home, as John writes in the very first verse that “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus’ whole being is oriented towards the Father. His intimacy and familiarity with the Father is so great that anyone who knows Him cannot help but know the Father. And what is true of Jesus is true of the saints—by knowing them fully, we cannot help but know Jesus and the Father more fully.
What is true of the saints can be true of us. As we saw yesterday, there is no one here on earth who could not be a saint one day. So there is no one here on earth who cannot lead people to God as the saints lead us. So, we should consider how to draw closer to Jesus, and have the same intimacy and familiarity with Him as He has with the Father. Spiritual reading, especially lives of saints, can help spark in us concrete ideas of how to follow Christ in our particular times, places, and occupations. In prayer, we can speak with Jesus and get to know Him, cultivating a close friendship with Him. Through confession, we clear away any obstacles between us and Him—crucial if we are to become truly close with Jesus—and of course, we meet Him and are made like Him in a special way through the Eucharist. This will result in the most powerful method of evangelization—to have such an intimacy and familiarity with Jesus that if anyone knows us, they cannot help but know Jesus.