5th Sunday of Easter A - Homily 1

Homily 1 – 2005 

There seems to be such a wealth of promising themes worth reflecting on in this week’s readings that I found it hard to decide what to settle on.  Perhaps it was because of the Retreat in Daily Life (that has been going on this past week and will be continuing over the next two) that made the comment of Philip in today’s gospel stand out more than anything else.  Philip said to Jesus: Lord, let us see the Father and we shall be satisfied.  I relate to that, and I imagine that the parishioners who chose to do the Retreat equally resonate with it.

I am reminded of the story told of St Teresa of Avila as a young girl.  Apparently she and her brother went off from home one day, creating a degree of consternation in the family.  When she was eventually found not too far from home heading south, she was asked where did she think she was going and why.  Her answer was supposed to have been: "I want to see God".   I remember listening to the distress felt by a parishioner some years ago, who said: "I want so much to feel Jesus’ love for me, but can’t".  Her longing echoed the familiar prayer made by St Richard of Chichester: O dear Lord, three things I pray: to see thee more clearly; to love thee more dearly; to follow thee more nearly day by day.  The Hebrew psalmist said so beautifully, before all of these: Like the deer that longs for running waters, my soul longs for you, my God.  My soul thirsts for God, the God of my life...

Their longings may resonate in the hearts of many of you.  Is there any hope of such longings being answered? and if so, what do you need to do?  There is a rich tradition in the Church that addresses these longings.  The answer begins as a journey inwards, to the source of the thirst, the longing.  On the way, there takes place a thorough sorting out: a process of  identifying, and then gradually letting go of,  every other longing.  Jesus called it a death to the self.  But that sitting lightly with every other longing is not a disengagement from people, a withdrawal of love from others.  Rather it is an intensifying and a touching in to the source: In loving maturely we learn not to seek from but to give to.

In fact for us disciples of Jesus, our journey into God is a journey into Jesus.  As the Lord says in the gospel today: Philip, to see me is to see the Father.  Yet, since our situation is different from that of Philip, the Christ we see is no longer physically attainable.  He has moved beyond the physicality of life that we are familiar with and now is alive with risen life – whatever that means.  Our journey towards him can be felt as a journey into darkness, into the desert.  Yet Philip is right: we will be satisfied.  St Teresa speaks of a wonderful experience of oneness with Christ (she was a very passionate, sensate, Spanish woman).  Most don’t arrive at that depth of love.  Yet the journey itself, the travelling the way, is immensely rewarding.  Jesus himself speaks of the possibility of deep friendship: I do not call you servants but friends.  

But there is only one way to be nourished by that friendship, to take hold of it and to be convinced of it: And that is to set out on the journey.  The starting point, and the energy source along the way, is precisely the sense of emptiness, the thirst, the longing for more, that so often comes across as a growing dissatisfaction with what is.  We want to break free from and get rid of the clutter in our lives, the hidden addictions, the fruitless striving for substitutes and distraction.  We eventually face the fact that they don’t satisfy us.

More than 1500 years ago, St Augustine diagnosed his own, and our, condition well.  He wrote: Our hearts are made for thee, O God, and they will not rest until they rest in thee.