20150516 THE TEMPTATION TO CIRCUMVENT JESUS TO THE FATHER

20150516 THE TEMPTATION TO CIRCUMVENT JESUS TO THE FATHER

Readings at Mass

First reading

Acts 18:23-28 ©

Paul came down to Antioch, where he spent a short time before continuing his journey through the Galatian country and then through Phrygia, encouraging all the followers.

  An Alexandrian Jew named Apollos now arrived in Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, with a sound knowledge of the scriptures, and yet, though he had been given instruction in the Way of the Lord and preached with great spiritual earnestness and was accurate in all the details he taught about Jesus, he had only experienced the baptism of John. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him speak boldly in the synagogue, they took an interest in him and gave him further instruction about the Way.

  When Apollos thought of crossing over to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote asking the disciples to welcome him. When he arrived there he was able by God’s grace to help the believers considerably by the energetic way he refuted the Jews in public and demonstrated from the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.

Psalm

Psalm 46:2-3,8-10 ©

God is king of all the earth.

or

Alleluia!

All peoples, clap your hands,

  cry to God with shouts of joy!

For the Lord, the Most High, we must fear,

  great king over all the earth.

God is king of all the earth.

or

Alleluia!

God is king of all the earth,

  sing praise with all your skill.

God is king over the nations;

  God reigns on his holy throne.

God is king of all the earth.

or

Alleluia!

The princes of the people are assembled

  with the people of Abraham’s God.

The rulers of the earth belong to God,

  to God who reigns over all.

God is king of all the earth.

or

Alleluia!

Gospel Acclamation

Jn14:16

Alleluia, alleluia!

I shall ask the Father,

and he will give you another Advocate

to be with you for ever.

Alleluia!

Or

Jn16:28

Alleluia, alleluia!

I came from the Father

and have come into the world,

and now I leave the world

to go to the Father.

Alleluia!

Gospel

John 16:23-28 ©

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘I tell you most solemnly,

anything you ask for from the Father he will grant in my name.

Until now you have not asked for anything in my name.

Ask and you will receive, and so your joy will be complete.

I have been telling you all this in metaphors,

the hour is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in metaphors;

but tell you about the Father in plain words.

When that day comes you will ask in my name;

and I do not say that I shall pray to the Father for you,

because the Father himself loves you for loving me

and believing that I came from God.

I came from the Father and have come into the world

and now I leave the world to go to the Father.’

THE TEMPTATION TO CIRCUMVENT JESUS TO THE FATHER

SCRIPTURE READINGS: ACTS 18:23-28; JOHN 16:23-28

Where can we truly find the face of God?  Before the coming of Christ, man sought for God through trial and error, reflecting on nature, his own life and history.  But such an approach is fraught with danger because we might arrive at an image and understanding of God based on our understanding.  When theology is reduced to anthropology, we can even fall into agnosticism and atheism, where God is made in the image of man.

Clearly, if we are not from God, we cannot know God as He is.  Only Jesus, the Son of God who is from the bosom of the Father, can reveal to us who God is.  (cf Jn 1:18)  Jesus has been with the Father even before the beginning of time.    Indeed, the whole gospel of John is written to show to us that Jesus is the Son of the Living God and that in and through Him alone, can we come to know the Father’s love and His divine plan for us all.  Christians therefore believe that Christ is the only way to the Father.  “I am the way, and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” (Jn14:6)  To have seen Christ is to see the Father.  This is what Jesus said, “If you have known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him.” (Jn 14:7)  St Paul underscores this when he said, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2;5).  In today’s gospel too, Jesus said “I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”

Yet, this truth of Jesus as our only mediator to the Father is being compromised by many Catholics and Christians.  The threat to Jesus’ mediatorship is that many are bypassing Jesus to come to the Father.  Instead of coming through Christ to the Father, they adopt a theocentric approach to God, like many monotheistic religions or even polytheistic religions and New Age Movement.  At least for such theocentric religions, we can appreciate their approach, since they do not believe in Christ as the revelation of God.

But what is contradictory and an anomaly is for professed Christians and Catholics to approach the Father without going through Jesus. This is taking a step backward in their spirituality.  It defeats their faith in the Incarnation and the Resurrection.  For what is the purpose of the Incarnation if not God’s plan to reveal Himself through humanity in the person of Jesus?  God is pure Spirit and God knows that we need to see Him tangibly in space and time.  The Incarnation is of course oriented towards the paschal mystery.  In the very life of Christ, His teachings, His miracles and His works of compassion, He revealed to us the Father’s love and mercy.  Most of all, by His death and resurrection, He demonstrated to us the unconditional, unreserved love of the Father for us all.  To go to the Father without Jesus would mean that Jesus’ assumption of our humanity and His death for us were all in vain.

Truly, the sole purpose of Jesus’ coming is to show us the face of the Father and His love for us.  To bypass Jesus in our relationship with the Father is tantamount to rejecting Jesus as the mediator.  If Christians claim the unique universality of Christ for all of humanity, it is because Jesus is the revealer and the revelation of the Father.  His resurrection vindicates His claim that He comes from the Father.  By not coming to the Father through Jesus, we are going backwards in our relationship with God, as if nothing has been revealed to us about the true nature of God and the means to salvation.  Jesus told Philip, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (Jn 14:9)

But why, then, did Jesus apparently contradict Himself today when He first told us, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete” and then in the same vein declare, “On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God.”  It appears therefore that we can go to the Father directly.  This is far from the truth.

The fact remains that although the Father loves us directly, He can do so only in Jesus.  So, if Jesus told His disciples to ask everything in His name and to go to the Father through Him, it is because identification with Him is the way to be identified with the Father and be in union with Him.  When Jesus commanded His disciples to pray in His name, it was not simply to utter the name of Jesus in prayer.   Rather, to pray in His name is to put on His mind and His heart when we pray to the Father.   We must adopt the same filial attitude of childlike trust in the Father, just as Jesus calls Him, “Abba Father.”  Such filial confidence in the Father implies total surrender of one’s will, mind and heart to Him.   So to pray in His name is to pray the way He prays to the Father, in total submission to His holy will and divine plan.  Like Jesus, we, too, must say, “My food is to do the will of the One who sent me, and to accomplish his work.”  (Jn 6:34)

Praying in the name of Jesus is more than “saying prayers” or uttering His name, but also a commitment to the life of Jesus, imitating His way of life, His love for humanity and for His Father, His self-emptying love and humility and total availability to both His Father and man.   It requires that we follow Him, observe His commandments, loving others just as He loves us, since that had been the way He loved His Father.  It also means that we want to pray not only for ourselves, our selfish and petty needs.  Rather, like Jesus, our prayers must extend beyond one’s narrow confines to that for the whole of humanity whom the Father loves and wants to save.   To pray in His name is to share the Father and Jesus’ concern for every soul, for the whole of creation.  Just before His death, Jesus declared, “I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.  Rise, let us go hence.” (Jn14:31).  To pray in His name is to desire only what the Father desires for us.  Obedience is the perfect prayer as taught by Jesus, “Your will be done on earth as in heaven.”

But we can pray in this manner with the same faith, love and ardor of Jesus only if we have seen the Father and know Him as the loving, compassionate, kind, forgiving and all powerful Father.  Otherwise, in the midst of trials, we give up on the Father.  That is why Jesus took great pains to reveal to His disciples the love of His Father, lest they, too, give up hope upon seeing His passion and death on the cross.  In the face of darkness, hopelessness and trials in life, we need to cling to this truth in order that we are able to commend our spirit to the Father with outstretched arms as Jesus did at the cross.

Consequently, it is urgent that as we approach the feast of Pentecost, we must cultivate a special devotion to the Holy Spirit.  Only He can bring us to Jesus, since He is sent by Jesus in the name of the Father.  To have a share in the mind and heart of Jesus means to have a share in His Spirit, the same Spirit that He has from the Father.  Only with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, can we then pray like Jesus, think like Him and be one with Him in His union with the Father.  The same Holy Spirit will also enable us to pray from our hearts in a childlike way.  Most of all, the Holy Spirit enables us to experience the love of the Father in person.  In a real way, we know that God is love because Jesus pours out His love to us in the Holy Spirit.  (Rom 5:5)

Hence, if our prayer were to be truly effective, rich, meaningful and fulfilling, our relationship with the Father must first be Christic, then pneumatic, before it is theocentric.  Anyone who seeks to go straight to the Father will not only fall into error about the nature of God, who is not simply one but Trinitarian in persons, but also a blatant denial that Christ is the revelation of the Father and His role as the only mediator between God and man, and our intercessor before the throne of the heavenly Father as the author of Hebrews tells us.  (Heb 7:25)  Any form of authentic Christian prayer is always made to the Father through Christ.  All liturgical prayers end with “through Christ our Lord.”

We must be careful that we do not allow non-Christian traditions, practices and forms of prayer that are alien to Christian beliefs and practices to adulterate and weaken our faith in Christ as our Saviour and only mediator to the Father.

Written by The Most Rev William Goh

Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore

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