THE WORD
Ac 14, 21-27 / Jn 14,7-14
Jesus said to his disciples, “If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
IN OTHER WORDS
“You know, Father, for some time I left our church,” a parishioner told me one day. This was at the Saint Arnold Janssen Parish in Basak-San Nicolas, Cebu City, the only SVD-run parish in the whole of the Archdiocese of Cebu. I was serving this parish located in a depressed area for eight years. “What do you mean?” I asked the man.
“I left our church and joined the other (Pentecostal!) church in our neighborhood. I was already taking part in their religious services there.” “And how was it there?” I inquired.
“I did not feel at home. Their church is bare. No images, no statues at all. I missed the statue of Saint Arnold and the image of Mama Mary and the image of the Lord Jesus. Most of all, I missed the Real Presence in our tabernacle with the sanctuary lamp beside it. And so, I’m coming back to our church, Father. Here I feel at home and can really pray.”
“Welcome back home!” I said gladly.” Be convinced now that this is where you belong.”
Did not that parishioner somehow echo what Philip told Jesus in our gospel today? “Master, show us the Father…” Was not Philip, in effect, asking for something concrete-- a representation, an icon, an image of the Father? The iconoclasts notwithstanding, people of flesh and blood need concrete representations in their devotional life.
In his answer to Philip, Jesus hits the nail on the head: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Paul, in his Letter to the Colossians, puts it this way: Jesus is “the image of the unseen God.” (Col 1:15) In his “Treatise against the Heresies”, Irenaeus declares something similar: “… all saw the Father in the Son, for the Father is the invisible of the Son, the Son the visible of the Father.” Would such concepts as mercy and compassion and love not have remained abstract and cold had Jesus not made them of flesh and blood? Thanks to the Incarnation of the Word of God, we see and hear and feel the all-merciful, all-compassionate, all-loving God, in the person of Jesus, he being the perfect image of the Father.
Followers of Christ that we are, we should bring the Father’s presence to our world, making it our mission to show something of the mercy and the compassion and the love of the Father to those within our reach. In this mission we have a good leader: Pope Francis who walks the talk to encourage us. Thanks be to God for him! He has learned of Christ well. In his own simple, humble way, he shows us the face of the Father -- the Father of us all.
- Fr. Dong Alpuento, SVD | USC, Talamban, Cebu City
The Word in other words 2016
An annual project of Logos Publications, The WORD in Other Words Bible Diary contains daily scripture readings and reflections written by priest, brothers, and sisters of the three congregations founded by St. Arnold Janssen (the SVD, SSpS, and SSpSAP). It hopes to serve as a daily companion to readers who continually seek the correlation of the Word of God and human experience.
