and you have seen him.” Philip asked him, “Lord, show us the Father, and that is enough.”
Jesus said to him, “What! I have been with you so long and you still do not know me,
Philip? Whoever sees me sees the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do
you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? All that I say to you, I do
not say of myself. The Father who dwells in me is doing his own work. Believe me when
I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; at least believe it on the evidence
of these works that I do.
Truly, I say to you, the one who believes in me will do the same works that I do; and
he will even do greater than these, for I am going to the Father. Everything you ask in
my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Indeed, anything
you ask, calling upon my name, I will do it.
Reflect
You can’t share what you
don’t have. But having received the gift of faith, we are called to share that faith with those we
meet. Throughout the Church’s history, from Jesus to the apostles, from age to age, down to
the present day, the faithful have shared the Good News of life in Christ. We speak about
what we have seen and heard, how God has transformed our lives through the gift of his
grace.
Sometimes it can be hard to witness to our faith. Even the apostles, after years of sharing
Jesus’ life and ministry, asked him for more, as Philip does in today’s Gospel, when he asks
Jesus to show them the Father. We can find ourselves making the same demands – asking
that God give us proof of his power to confirm our faith. But our faith does not rest on the
signs and wonders that God does but on the personal relationship that we have with Jesus.
The closer we are to him, the more that he and the Father will dwell with us in the Spirit.
© Copyright Bible Diary 2023