Quality and unity of the relationship.

Brothers and sisters, it is a great joy for parents to look into their child’s face and see their face in it. When a father holds his son in his arms, we involuntarily look for similarities in features and later characters. Our human sight wants to penetrate it all. : we would like to see.

Even the apostles wanted to see the Father. And Jesus answers in amazement, “Philip, I have been with you so long, and you do not know me? Whoever sees me sees the Father…” (Jn 14:9).

This passage from the Gospel of John again contains one almost `amazing’ point – a misunderstanding in the dialogue between Jesus and his disciples. Jesus’ thinking is radically different. Once again, he is out of step with his surroundings. He transcends the myopia of human ideas. Philip indeed asked quite sincerely – even plainly.
But… it’s best if we put ourselves “in the shoes” of Philip for a moment and imagine Jesus addressing us by name as well, asking, “You’ve been with me so long, and you don’t know me?”
That’s how long you’ve been with us, Lord – years, decades… That’s how long we’ve been praying for you, trying to communicate with you, pleading with you… Many of us could confess our personal experience of Christ, yet we still don’t know him, we doubt… We want to see the Father as if the Son were not enough. And that’s the minor problem with our relationship.

Especially in the 1990s, Father & Son type companies appeared in our living space like mushrooms after the rain. What has been a decade or more long tradition in Western economies? Father and son – continuity of life, ideas, work… What a natural thing. Quite close to us.

Something similar, but an entirely different relationship quality, is presented today by Jesus. Our quality of relationship with Jesus is also built on the understanding of the phrase, “He who sees Me sees the Father.” Notice that everything Jesus does, he builds it up in people’s hearts and does not just bind it to his person. He is constantly talking about the Father. And we always feel the warmth of the relationship between him and the Father – we think it in his words, his attitudes. The Father’s whole life is determined by unity with the Son and vice versa.

Today is a new challenge for our faith. A faith that goes beyond parochialism to persons is faith in the Trinity – in a relationship that produces love. He who loves is very close to seeing more than Philip saw. To see the Father in the Son. That he not be seduced by the temptation of our experience, which presents the relationship of father and son as a struggle, a competition, and sometimes even hatred.

Jesus spoke to the apostles and another lesson of the Gospel that is of fundamental importance for us. The Father-Son relationship is eternal, and we are called to live in his image already here on earth. The Father-Son relationship is existential for each of us. In a sense: it determines our whole life. Let us not be afraid to embrace this mystery of the relationship between the Father and the Son, for only it will teach us to live our fatherhood and our sonship properly. Each of us is both father and son. If this is not the case, there is still a long way to go…