He Who Sees Me Sees the Father
If the ultimate goal of the Christian life is to “see the face of God,” if this is indeed God’s own ardent and passionate desire for each of his children, then what does this really mean? What does it really mean to see God? Is it not impossible in this life, as God himself said to Moses: “No man shall see me and live”? Indeed, this direct, face-to-face vision will not occur until the next life, when we pass through the boundary of death and into the limitless mystery of Infinite Love. This Love will enfold us within itself and make it possible for us to gaze, with eyes wide open, upon the Face of God. Only then shall we behold, in unmediated fullness, the direct radiance of his Beauty, shining with Goodness and Truth, piercing our hearts with an ineffable and endless joy.
This final Day will be a day never ending, a day that is the consummation of all of our desires and aspirations, the quelling of all our fears, doubts, and questionings. This Day will be the eternal day of vision. It will be the perfect ecstasy of love in which, touched by the gaze of God which penetrates our whole being to its innermost depths, we are drawn out of ourselves and immersed in him. We will be immersed in the infinite Ocean of the Trinity’s delight, in the perfect communion that exists between the Father, Son, and Spirit, and they in turn will fully inhabit us, filling and pervading our whole being. And, finally, within the all-encompassing mystery of this Light, we shall behold, we shall know, we shall rest, in intimate unity among ourselves, in a heart-to-heart communication with every child of God.
This is the “missing puzzle-piece” to our enigmatic existence, to the restless longing in the depths of our hearts. This is the Homeland for which our homeless hearts long, and of which they have, as it were, a “memory,” the memory of our creation through the gaze of God’s love in the beginning of our life. We are each one of us a unique irradiation of the divine Light, and we therefore thirst to be joined together to the Fullness. May such an invitation, such a destiny, awaken in our hearts a profound desire and an ardent hope. May it awaken in us an expectation, a confidence, and a willingness to surrender ourselves to the One who calls us and indeed already cradles us within himself.
This is the longing and the childlike confidence that has been awakened in so many souls throughout the history of salvation, from the time of the ancient patriarchs of the Old Covenant until the present day. Let us quote two examples from the history of the Church. The first is Saint Columban, an Irish monk of the 7th Century, who expresses his own thirst to see the face of Christ, to be possessed by his Love, and begs for the grace to keep vigil in expectation of this Day:
How blessed, how fortunate, are those servants whom the Lord will find watchful when he comes. Blessed is the time of waiting when we stay awake for the Lord, the Creator of the universe, who fills all things and transcends all things.
How I wish he would awaken me, his humble servant, from the sleep of slothfulness… How I wish he would enkindle me with that fire of divine love. The flames of his love burn beyond the stars; the longing for his overwhelming delights and the divine fire ever burn within me!
How I wish I might deserve to have my lantern always burning at night in the temple of my Lord, to give light to all who enter the house of my God. Give me, I pray you, Lord, in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son and my God, that love that does not fail so that my lantern, burning within me and giving light to others, may be always lighted and never extinguished.
Jesus, our most loving Savior, be pleased to light our lanterns, so that they might burn for ever in your temple, receiving eternal light from you, the eternal light, to lighten our darkness and to ward off from us the darkness of the world.
Give your light to my lantern, I beg you, my Jesus, so that by its light I may see that holy of holies which receives you as the eternal priest entering among the columns of your great temple. May I ever see you only, look on you, long for you; may I gaze with love on you alone, and have my lantern shining and burning always in your presence.
Loving Savior, be pleased to show yourself to us who knock, so that in knowing you we may love only you, love you alone, desire you alone, contemplate only you day and night, and always think of you. Inspire in us the depth of love that is fitting for you to receive as God. So may your love pervade our whole being, possess us completely, and fill all our senses, that we may know no other love but love for you who are everlasting. May our love be so great that the many waters of sky, land and sea cannot extinguish it in us: many waters could not extinguish love.(Second Reading in the Office of Readings, Tuesday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time)
The next example is Saint Gregory of Nyssa, one of the pillars of the early Church, who speaks of the sense of expectation, the thrill, the “vertigo” that one experiences on considering this awesome invitation to “behold the face of God”:
Consider the feelings of a man who looks down into the depths of the sea from the top of a mountain. This is similar to my own experience when the voice of the Lord from on high, as from a mountaintop, reached the unfathomable depths of my intellect. Along the seacoast, you may often see mountains facing the sea. It is as though they had been sliced in two, with a sheer drop from top to bottom. At the top a projection forms a ledge overhanging the depths below. If a man were to look down from that ledge, he would be overcome by dizziness. In this same way my soul grows dizzy when it hears the great voice of the Lord saying: Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.
“The vision of God is offered to those who have purified their hearts,” he says. Look at the dizziness that affects the soul drawn to contemplating the depths of these statements. If God is life, then he who does not see God does not see life. Yet God cannot be seen; the apostles and prophets, inspired by the Holy Spirit, have testified to this. Into what straits is man’s hope driven! Yet God does raise and sustain our flagging hopes. He rescued Peter from drowning and made the sea into a firm surface beneath his feet. He does the same for us; the hands of the Word of God are stretched out to us when we are out of our depths, buffeted and lost in speculation. Grasped firmly in his hands, we shall be without fear: Blessed are the pure of heart, he says, for they shall see God. (Second Reading of the Office of Readings, 12th Week in Ordinary Time)
How can we begin, already in this life, to approach this vision? How can we prepare our hearts for this transforming encounter, this blessed union? God is so great, and we are so little, how can we ever overcome the infinite distance between his Majesty and our misery, his Immensity and our smallness. The answer lies in Jesus Christ…in the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of the Son of God. As we saw in our previous meditation, it is the incarnate Son who reconciles God and humanity, binding them together within his own Sacred Heart. Therefore, in drawing near to this Heart we draw near to the Furnace of Divine Love present within our world. Flaming forth from Jesus are the rays of eternal Light, unveiling before us the mystery of the Father and his Love…the mystery of the Trinity in its eternal and life-giving intimacy.
“In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who 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 in me?” (John 14:2-10)
Jesus speaks of bringing us into the dwelling-place of the Father’s Love, into the intimacy that he shares always with the Father as his beloved Son. He has gone to prepare a place for us, and will come again to take us to himself, so that where he is, we may also be. This is his profound desire, as he himself prayed: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which you have given me in your love for me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Yet indeed in going to the Father he has not left us, for he still dwells with us through the power of the Spirit, unveiling his mysterious presence to us in so many ways…in prayer, in the depths of silent love, in fraternal charity and interpersonal communion, in the Sacraments and the teaching of his holy Church, in the Word of Scripture. Yes, he dwells in the inmost depths of the heart of each one of us through grace.
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 13:16-23)
And in this way he is still, for all, “the way, the truth, and the life” by which we go to the Father; and our contemplation of the beauty of his face reveals to us the face of the heavenly Father. “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” for the Son is utterly transparent to the radiance of the Father’s Love. Therefore, in allowing him to gaze loving upon us, to pierce the depths of our being with the light of his glance, we become capable of entering into a living communion with God and beginning, in faith, to see the Trinity already in this life.
Now if the dispensation of death [the Old Covenant], carved in letters on stone, came with such splendor that the Israelites could not look at Moses’ face because of its brightness, fading as this was, will not the dispensation of the Spirit be attended with greater splendor? For if there was splendor in the dispensation of condemnation, the dispensation of righteousness must far exceed it in splendor. Indeed, in this case, what once had splendor has come to have no splendor at all, because of the splendor that surpasses it. For if what faded away came with splendor, what is permanent must have much more splendor. Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not see the end of the fading splendor. But their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds; but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 2:7-18)
This is the invitation that lies before us, already, here and now: to be transformed from glory to glory by gazing into the countenance of the Lord. We are to be transformed into the very image that, like mirrors, we reflect: the image of the beloved Son of the Father. This is the freedom, the filial boldness that we have through Christ. God has opened himself entirely to us, laying bare his heart before us in Jesus Christ, and this very vulnerability on his part awakens and elicits our own vulnerability before him. It is an invitation to open ourselves to him, to lay ourselves completely before him, and to receive his loving gaze piercing into the depths of our being. We can hear him say to us: Do you trust me? He extends his hand to us, so that, if we are willing to place our hand is his, he may take us with him, beyond the veil that separates us, into the intimacy of his loving embrace, into the radiance of his own vision.