FURTHER TO THE KATHAROI

 

Makarioi hoi katharoi tèi kardiai, hoti autoi ton theon opsontai.

Fortunate are the clean in heart, because they shall see God.

I wrote a blog post on this as I did on the other Beatitudes, and thought at the time that the “seeing” was through the Spirit. This may be true, but another thought occurred to me. In John 14 (8), Philip the disciple says to Yeshua, ‘Show us the Father and that’s enough for us,’ and Yeshua replies, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still don’t know me? He who has seen me has seen the Father.’

This stunning reply should make us think, inter alia about the Beatitude. ‘No one has ever seen God’, true: but ‘Who has seen me, has seen the Father.’ Could it be, then, that whoever saw, and sees, Yeshua and believes, is pure in heart? For he, the Meshiach, the Anointed, is, then, the visible form of the Creator. And the cleanness, the purity, of heart that is required to see, really to see, is faith. Because it is the eye of faith that sees through the lean, tough, dark-haired, brown-skinned man, the Father of an infinite majesty, the God of endless, suffering love.

Tricky for Philip. Trickier for us, who do not see him face to face. There are, possibly, three ways through this enigma. 1) First, the icon. Not necessarily an Orthodox icon: it can be a painting or a sculpture, a Gospel scene, a Pietà, or a crucifix. Really to see such an icon, with the eye of faith, is perhaps to come close to seeing Him, and through Him, the Father. 2) Secondly, meditation. In the first part of an Ignatian meditation we are asked to take a Gospel scene and to recreate it as vividly as possible with our own mind, assigning ourselves the place of a minor character. If we do this with complete engagement, we may again, perhaps, come close to seeing Him, and seeing through Him. 3) And finally, we should remember that He also said that ‘‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Mt 25:40) If, then, we are to look on any man and see Yeshua, are we to look on any man and see the Father? The mind not only boggles but rebels. And yet. What does the eye of faith behold? It sees, in the beaten and wounded traveller, a neighbour. It sees, in the down-and-out begging for food, Yeshua. It sees, in the man Yeshua Bar-Yosef, the Father. What have they all in common? Suffering. 

If, now, we go to the end of this trail of learning, what do we find? A Father who suffers. A Father who is denied and rejected, a Father who continually sees his love thrown back in his face. Could it be that that is exactly what Yeshua meant us, through Philip, to learn? We see the Son on the Cross. We see the Father in the Son. How much discernment does it take to draw the conclusion?