Sir, we wish to see
Jesus (Jn 12:21)
In this Year of Grace we are invited by the Australian
Bishops to make a pilgrimage into the inner sanctum of our being. A journey of faith having before our eyes an
icon or as an entry point into the inner sanctum, the face of Jesus. Not only
His face as the human face of God, enfleshed, but the image of the invisible
God. Jesus, the Icon which shows us the truth and reality of God. To experience “charis” and discover the
divine truth of who God is in the person of Jesus, the first born of all
creation and the first born from death (Col. 1:18). To discover the truth of the human person,
whose blueprint is in the likeness of Jesus. The prototype of all creation.
This journey of faith in a year or moment designated “grace”
is to stop and to find and contemplate Jesus, who then shows us the real human
being. The image which God had
envisioned for the human beings from
before time began and before sin brought a forgetting of that image. A forgetting that we have been designed in His
own beautiful image, and in the seeing this then it is to recognize and see
more clearly, Jesus. The principal task of
all “life” is to mirror Jesus, so that those who see “me” might see clearly
...Jesus. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (Jn. 12:21) is the soul’s yearning to recognise Jesus or His icon made visible in the other. To seek Him in daily life and in every one who has “life” breathed into them. “Sir, we want to see Jesus” It’s you whom my soul longs for and desires.
We seek Jesus in the noise of life but also He can be found in turmoil of life and He comes in moments of graced silence where words are not needed but the effect of true humanity is seen and felt, because Jesus opens up the panorama which clearly shows what the human being can be and is in the mind of God. The vision shows the design and possibilities of grace. A divine bequest. An ecstasy overflowing and uncontainable which overflowed into life and allowing the human a share of God’s own inexpressible life. Life is the result of an overflow of the love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the home designed for life is heaven with a vision of the face of divinity forever.
This year of Grace gives us the opportunity to live so that development of divine manners maybe accomplished in order that we may not be found wanting like the unprepared virgins (Mt. 25:1-13). Those manners lost in the eons past may during these moments of Grace be relearned so that at the end of life we stand before God not as strangers and homeless in what should be our natural homeland, Paradise, but as sons and daughters who have been on a journey and are returning home to their Father. This year of Grace opens the vista for a vision of glory to be seen as a sign post towards home.
Nothing of the life journey’s effects is lost but all is retained, though it is re organised in a manner which grace has purified . Indeed preserved are all of life’s imprints, triumphs, sorrows, which grace then purifies. Thus re-established, grace, together with all its valuable gifts leads to transfiguration and finally ascension; Life with its grace filled purification is raised higher into the grace of God and ultimate union with Him.
Jesus has opened the portals for us to enter. He leads the procession of those going home to the Father who engendered them through His ecstatic love. Now they are returning home with Him as the Shepherd who has not left one of those given to Him behind (Jn 17:12) He leads and they joyfully follow. “Come let us go towards the light of my father’s love, I am your shepherd I will lead you, I will not leave one of you behind. Come follow me.” Be at home here in the high places (Hk.3:19).
When on this lofty ground we encounter the Messiah. “We have found the Messiah” (Jn1:42). What joy to finally encounter the Messiah who has silently accompanied and led us on the journey to the high places (Hk.3:19) To finally see his face. (Mt.17:1-9) I have done the journey of Grace with Jesus who has done for me Il Camino. Who has been for me the prayer itself and I have been the pilgrim prayer, bringing with Me Jesus to those loftier grounds .
The Year of Grace, a gracious moment, a moment of abundant faith.
