The Third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2025

John 21, 1–19

At that time, Jesus revealed himself again to his disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. He revealed himself in this way. Together were Simon Peter, Thomas called Didymus, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, Zebedee’s sons, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We also will come with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. When it was already dawn, Jesus was standing on the shore; but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, have you caught anything to eat?” They answered him, “No.” So he said to them, “Cast the net over the right side of the boat and you will find something.” So they cast it, and were not able to pull it in because of the number of fish. So the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord.” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he tucked in his garment, for he was lightly clad, and jumped into the sea. The other disciples came in the boat, for they were not far from shore, only about a hundred yards, dragging the net with the fish. When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you just caught.” So Simon Peter went over and dragged the net ashore full of one hundred fifty-three large fish. Even though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come, have breakfast.” And none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they realized it was the Lord. Jesus came over and took the bread and gave it to them, and in like manner the fish. This was now the third time Jesus was revealed to his disciples after being raised from the dead.  When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He then said to Simon Peter a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” Jesus said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was distressed that Jesus had said to him a third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had said this, he said to him, “Follow me.”

St. John’s recollections of the events after the Lord’s Resurrection very prominently feature St. Peter.  On Easter Sunday morning, probably while the Apostles were still asleep, Mary Magdalene came rushing to the house where they were staying and told them about the stone rolled back from the tomb.  It was Peter and John who ran to see for themselves, and they came away believing, though not understanding very well.  An implicit contrast is shown when the Lord appears to the Apostles the Sunday afterwards, when St. Thomas was present.  The Lord declared, “Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed” (John 20, 19).  That is, Peter’s faith is greater than his because he believed even before he saw the Lord again.  In the Gospel Reading for today’s Mass, Peter takes the initiative and goes fishing, once again in Galilee, in order to feed the Apostles.  Following his lead, the Apostles go with him.  Although failing to catch anything, Peter follows the direction of Jesus — unknown to him at the time — and takes in an enormous catch.  In these two accounts John emphasizes Peter’s faith.

After Jesus and the Apostles have eaten there on the shore, Jesus and Peter walked together and the Lord asks him three times if he loves him.  Three times Peter affirms that he does indeed love him, the third time with a certain exasperation.  And after each affirmation, the Lord tells him to feed his sheep.  Coming after the Lord providing food for the Apostles through Peter, it is clear that Jesus wants Peter to imitate him and That he wants to feed his flock through Peter.  He tells Peter quite openly how he will glorify God by his death, and Peter accepts this without protest.  To follow Jesus means to follow him all the way — through death into heaven.  Here, John emphasizes Peter’s love.  If you love me, follow me.

John throws the spotlight off himself in writing about Peter in this way so that he can keep himself as offstage, as it were, as possible.  It is Peter who is the leader of the Apostles, the head of the Church.  We are reassured of the certainty of the Faith which has been passed down to us through the Apostles from the Lord Jesus himself so that we may rededicate ourselves to helping to spread it through our prayers, words, and actions.

As a side-note: Some folks will make a fuss about the Greek words John uses in this Reading when Jesus asks Peter if he loves him, as though these alternating words showed some nuance in what the Lord was asking and what Peter was willing to give.  The fact is that in the proper Greek of the day, authors avoided repetition.  It was poor style to repeat the same word over and over.  John makes great efforts to write in a good Greek style and so he too avoids repetition as much as possible.  Besides this, Jesus would have been speaking privately to Peter either in Hebrew or in Aramaic where the nuances possible in Greek are simply not possible.  Thus, when Jesus asks Peter if he loves him, it is all he is asking.  And he asks us this as well, every day.

The Feast of Saints Philip and James, May 3, 2025

John 14, 6-14

Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever 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 is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”

Philip of Bethsaida is said to have introduced his friend Nathanael, whom Jesus subsequently chose to be an Apostle, to the Lord during the Lord’s early days of ministry: “Philip found Nathanael and said to him: We have found him of whom Moses, in the law and the prophets did write, Jesus the son of Joseph of Nazareth.”  So overwhelmed was Philip by the impression Jesus made on him that when his friend wondered if anything good could come from Nazareth, all he could answer was a breathless, “Come and see!”   Many of the first followers of Jesus like Andrew and John, had been followers of John the Baptist, and Philip may also have been one of these.  He evidently spoke Greek well, since Greeks who wished to see the Lord came to him for aid (cf. John 12, 21).  Later writers confuse the Apostle Philip with the Deacon Philip, whose exploits are recounted in the Acts of the Apostles.  St. James was the son of either Alphaeus or Cleophas, and his wife, Mary, who both followed the Lord.  James became known as one of the “Pillars” of the Church, especially in Jerusalem (cf. Galatians 2, 9).  He was the first bishop of Jerusalem and reigned there until his martyrdom at the hands of the Jewish leaders in the years leading up to the revolt against the Romans in 70 A.D.  The early Christian historian Hegesippus wrote that James did not drink wine or strong drink, did not eat meat, did not bathe, and did not cut his hair.  He lived as an ascetic, very much as John the Baptist had lived.  He was well-loved by the Jewish Christians whom he led, and even the Jews of the city called him “James the Just”.  His Epistle reveals him as well-versed in the Scriptures, with an earnest desire to help the poor.  He styles himself “the brother of the Lord”, which may indicate a close family tie to Jesus.

In the Gospel Reading for the Mass of this Feast, Philip urges the Lord Jesus, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Philip’s words must have dropped the jaws of the other Apostles, reclining with Jesus during the Last Supper: no one can see God and live.  This revealed a certain naivety on Philip’s part, but the Lord does not crush his desire.  He uses his request to teach about his own relation to the Father: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”  Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God (cf. Colossians 1, 15).

Every day we encounter people who want to see the Father, most of whom cannot put their longing into clear words.  Often their lives are lonely, twisted, and torn, and their bodies and expressions bear witness to that.  They are helpless but for us.  As members of the Body of Christ we can also be visible images of the invisible God, to the degree that we live holy lives.  It is the saint who can say, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Thus, the words and deeds which are done through the saint by the Father, are the meat and drink the people of the world hunger and thirst for.

Friday in the Second Week of Easter, May 2, 2025

John 6, 1-15

Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. The Jewish feast of Passover was near. When Jesus raised his eyes and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, he said to Philip, “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” He said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?” Jesus said, “Have the people recline.” Now there was a great deal of grass in that place. So the men reclined, about five thousand in number. Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted. When they had had their fill, he said to his disciples, “Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.” So they collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat. When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, “This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.” Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain alone.

The feeding of the five thousand poignantly reveals to us the superabundance of God’s love and care for us, and it so impressed the Evangelists that all four of them provide an account of it.  

The feeding itself looms so large in these accounts that we often miss what preceded it.  Here, St. John tells us very specifically that the Lord Jesus first approached his Apostle Philip: “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?”  Now, the Lord asks him this upon seeing the crowd “coming to him”.  Philip does not protest and ask the Lord why he was asking him; nor does he ask why they should buy bread for the people at all; nor does he criticize the question.  He simply puts forward the quite rational observation that, “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.”  He makes the observation with the obvious intent of working to a logical conclusion.  John states that “[Jesus] said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do.”  The Lord wanted the Apostles to think this problem through.  But it was a problem only because the Lord made it so, for he chose to present the coming of the people to him as of guests coming to a banquet, meaning that he, the Master of the Banquet, had the responsibility for feeding them.  Now, Philip had seen the Lord provide wine at the Wedding at Cana and he might have proposed that the Lord do something along those lines.  At this point in time, though, Philip and the other Apostles were still looking at the situation with earthly eyes, not heavenly ones.  They still had much growing to do.

Andrew points the way out, though unwittingly: “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?”  The Lord proceeds to use what-there-is to make an overabundance of food for the people to eat.  He need not have done that.  He could have caused food to float down from heaven, much like the old manna of which he will speak in the coming verses.  Or, he could have made food to appear, ready to eat, in an adjacent field.  The fact that he took the food that was available and increased it signifies how he works in those who believe in him.  Philip, for instance, believed in the Lord enough to try and answer his question without throwing up his hands and saying that he was asking the impossible.  The Lord employed Philip, just so, in the settling of the crowd and the feeding of the people.  The Lord made him a participant in the miracle.  He played the part of one of the servers at the Wedding at Cana.  The bread and the fish multiplied in his hands just as the water had become wine under the hands of the servants at the wedding.  Philip, then, was quite aware of the insufficiency of what he had and so could not doubt that the Lord was working through him to feed these people.  

The Lord works in the same way in accomplishing his will in us and in answering our prayers.  He answers our prayers in his time and in his way so as to draw us nearer to him, to refine our faith, as it were.  He makes us excruciatingly aware of our insufficiency to help ourselves or others, and then provides his help so that we know that it could only be his help.  He teaches us not to rely on ourselves and on our false estimates of what we are capable of accomplishing, and to rely on him.  This is particularly true of our salvation.  On our own we can no more reach heaven and eternal happiness than we can stretch a few fish and loaves to feed five thousand people.  The Lord will make this possible if we rely on him.  First, we must look our insufficiency squarely and then turn humbly to our God.

The Solemnity of St. Joseph the Worker, Thursday, May 1, 2025

Matthew 13, 54-58

Jesus came to his native place and taught the people in their synagogue. They were astonished and said, “Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds? Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? Are not his sisters all with us? Where did this man get all this?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and in his own house.” And he did not work many mighty deeds there because of their lack of faith.

“Is he not the carpenter’s son?”  The people of Nazareth, amazed at his teaching and by the reports they have heard of his miracles, look at Jesus, so familiar to them, and shake their heads.   Isaiah 53, 2: “There was no beauty in him, nor comeliness: and we have seen him, and there was no sightliness, that we should be desirous of him.”  How ordinary he seemed, just another child of the village.  And then he grew to manhood and the only thing noticeable about him was that he had not married.  He stayed quiet in the synagogue and did not speak up.  He seemed a little slow at times.  

His parents seemed strange, now that people thought about it.  The Mother kept out of the public eye but was always there when someone needed help.  She stayed very much in the background, but from choice not from shyness, for she possessed a strong personality.  And the father always seemed to be carrying around a secret, like a hidden weight.  He was very protective of his family.  He was an intelligent man, clever with his powerful hands.  He had no time for gossip or laughing at the misfortunes of others.  He was a righteous Jew who looked forward to the deliverance of Israel.  He was a man who worked with his hands for a living, fashioning or repairing plows or door frames just like his father before him.

And from this man and this woman, oddly detached from the people around them even while tied to them through their relations, came this wonder-worker who now opened his mouth and unexpected wisdom flowed out about God and his kingdom, at whose hands the lame walked and the blind saw, and at whose commands demons fled.  

Wednesday in the Second Week of Easter, April 30, 2025

John 3, 16-21

God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

These words come at the end of the Lord’s conversation with Nicodemus, but because the Greek text does not feature punctuation, which was only developing at that time, it is not easy to tell whether these words are those of the Lord or John’s own commentary on what the Lord has just said.  Most scholars agree that these are John’s words.

“God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  While this verse is familiar and appears very simple, its implications are enormous.  First, we see that God loves the “world”, which contrasts with how Jesus often uses “world”, which is as that which is opposed to heaven.  This tells us that the world’s failings and even wickedness cannot prevent God from loving it: our own wickedness cannot keep the Lord from loving us, though it will keep us from experiencing his love and receiving his mercy.  However, not only does God love the world, but he “so loved” the world that “he gave his only-begotten Son”.  The Greek word translated here as “he gave” has many meanings, including “to offer”, “to command”, “to pour”, and, significantly, “to utter” — since from all eternity the Father spoke the Word.  “Gave up” actually works better here than simply “he gave”, since the Father’s will was that his Son “empt[y] himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man” (Philippians 2, 7).  This tells us what kind of love the Father had for the world: it was not merely the regard of a Creator for his creation, or a love that would be repaid in kind, but a thoroughly gratuitous love which benefitted the lover in no way but benefitted the receiver in every way.  The verse reveals God as One who is much more even than all-powerful, all-knowing, and omnipresent: he is our Lover, and his love is infinite.  

“So that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  This part of the verse reveals the prime benefit of his love for us: that all who believe in his Son might have eternal life.  This means to take firmly into hearts what the Son teaches us, to obey his commandments, and to persevere in our faith in him. By doing this, we open ourselves up to his mercy, which leads to eternal life.  By refusing to do this, we close ourselves off from the life he so much wants to give us and turns us towards the darkness of eternal death.  We see this eagerness to give us life in the next verse: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”  Despite sins worse than those that brought on the great Flood, Almighty God continues to love us.  And yet, as John reflects, “The Light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to Light, because their works were evil.”  Despite all the signs of God’s love, manifested in the beauty and order of the natural world as well as in the words of his Prophets and the Life, Death, and Resurrection of his Son for our sake, there are many who reject him, preferring the darkness of their self-absorption to the light of love.  The irrationality of such a choice seems baffling, and would be hard to believe if it were not for the examples we see of it in the Scriptures, as in the very determined hatred of Judas and Caiphas, who were given multiple opportunities to turn away from their homicidal hatred of Jesus, and refused.

“But whoever lives the truth comes to the Light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.”  The saints are those who “live the truth” revealed by the Lord Jesus, that is, the truth of the surpassing love of God, and who respond with joy to it.  This response shows itself in devotion to prayer, to penance, to alms-giving, and to giving themselves to God as they have seen God giving up his Son for them.  

Tuesday in the Second Week of Easter, April 29, 2025

John 3, 7-15

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus answered and said to him, ‘How can this happen?” Jesus answered and said to him, “You are the teacher of Israel and you do not understand this? Amen, amen, I say to you, we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony. If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

We know very little about Nicodemus apart from what we find in St. John’s Gospel.  He was a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, which makes him at least middle-aged at the time he speaks to Jesus.  He was given a Greek name, a not uncommon practice among the Jews of that time.  From his conversation with the Lord we learn that he was eager to learn but careful in evaluating what he heard, and from working with Joseph of Arimathea we know him to be loyal to the truth once he accepted it.  His feast day — for he is considered a saint — is on August 31, although for centuries it was celebrated in the West on August 3.

St. John quotes the Lord Jesus as saying to Nicodemus, “If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”  John was fascinated by the way the Lord used ordinary “earthly” things to teach about heavenly things, and we see John giving several examples of this throughout his Gospel.  In fact, in his prologue to the Gospel, John refers to the Son of God as “The Word”, himself using a familiar “earthly” idea to talk about the divine reality of who the Word is.  We think of a word as an expression conceived by the mind, formed on the tongue, and spoken, accompanied by a breath: the Father, who conceived the Son from all eternity, speaking the Word — “generating” or “begetting” him — and the accompanying breath, the Holy Spirit (from spiritus, “spirit” or “breath”).  The Lord himself uses the wine at the wedding of Cana to teach about grace; the Temple in Jerusalem, to teach about his Body; the bread with which he fed the five thousand, to talk about the need all have to eat his Flesh; and the water in the Samaritan well, to teach about the water of baptism.  More examples could be given.  I would suggest that he also was teaching when he called his Mother, and also Mary Magdalene, “woman”. This was not a common way of addressing a woman, so when Jesus does this, it sticks out in our minds.  We ought to think of where the word comes from, and we should think back to the early pages of Genesis, where it says that “Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’, because she was taken out of ‘man’ ” (Genesis 2, 23).  Perhaps Jesus, by addressing these women as “woman” was identifying himself as Adam, or, rather, the New Adam, as St. Paul would do (cf. Romans 5, 12-21).  And, in the case of the Virgin Mary, identifying her as the New Eve, as St. Irenaeus taught in the second century.

All around us figures of the divine cloak themselves in ordinary, earthly things: the sunrise, the wind, clouds that sometimes hide the sun, the sand of a beach, a mountain, a river, the rain, sleep and waking, birth and death.  This is not accidental but something we should expect from God, who leaves his tracks even for the godless to follow so as to find him.  By looking for the deeper meaning of earthly things we can begin to think with a spiritual mind which will allow us to grow in our faith and to see God here even before we see him in heaven.

Monday in the Second Week of Easter, April 28, 2025

John 3, 1-8

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. He came to Jesus at night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you are doing unless God is with him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man once grown old be born again? Surely he cannot reenter his mother’s womb and be born again, can he?” Jesus answered, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born of water and Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

St. John notes that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night.  In modern times, people often meet professionally or socially after dark, but in the ancient world and until the Industrial Age, this did not happen.  He would have stolen through the empty, unlit streets of Jerusalem for the house where it was said Jesus was staying, like a conspirator or a thief going to meet a comrade.  He would not have made his plans known to anyone lest he be thought of by his peers as “that man’s follower”.  Still, Nicodemus had watched Jesus and listened carefully to his words.  He was puzzled and troubled, and where others let their uneasiness keep them from the Nazarene, Nicodemus had the integrity to go and talk to him away from the crowds and to learn for himself if this was the Messiah.

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you are doing unless God is with him.”  Nicodemus sums up in one line the argument Jesus was to make over and over to the Pharisees and Sanhedrin.  We can contrast the clear thinking of Nicodemus with the twisted, contorted denials of his brethren who would rather make the patently absurd claim that Jesus cast out demons by the power of the chief of the demons than entertain the merest possibility that he might be doing the work of God.  

“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”  John quotes parts of the ensuing conversation, and not all of it, and so it sounds rather abrupt and cryptic.  But these are the words the Lord spoke to Nicodemus.  They may seem obvious to us, but they speak of a profound mystery.  Unless one is “born from above”, a phrase Nicodemus would have have heard before, a person cannot “see” the Kingdom of God.  The Lord is speaking of grace.  But how do we believe in the Kingdom of heaven before we receive grace?  The soul is drawn to God even while still walking in the darkness before grace and willingly goes to him to learn who he is.  At that time, the person is able to learn much about God, yet much remains in darkness.  It is possible by the moonlight to see outlines and this is enough to go on for a while.  But then curiosity gives way to desire and this in turn gives way to love, and then grace comes as the rising of the sun.  In the full light of grace we “see” with the eyes of faith — we believe.

“How can a man once grown old be born again?”  Nicodemus knows that the Lord is using ordinary words to speak of extraordinary things, but he needs the Lord to teach him the vocabulary of the Kingdom of which he speaks.  “What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit.”  Jesus teaches Nicodemus that he is speaking of spiritual realities.  To a man well-educated in the very physical Law of Moses, this is an entirely new way of thinking.  The idea of spiritual rebirth was prefigured in the Old Law through the sacrifice of the scapegoat and in the purification laws, but here it stands out, in its fullness, in the clarity of the daylight.  In an instant, the darkness becomes light, and we can see clearly what we could not even guess at before.  “The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  We cannot see the wind, but we can see its effects in the trees or on the dust that normally lays quietly on the street.  We cannot read people’s minds, but when we see a businessman hurrying to a merchant’s stall we can surmise that he is interested in a transaction.  Likewise, we cannot see the Holy Spirit, but when we see a person performing a gratuitous act of kindness for another, or we see a young woman giving up her life to God as a religious, we know that he is the prime Actor.

In the night of this life we stumble about for our Lord, urged on by our love for him, progressing towards him even now with the help of the Holy Spirit.   Finally, the darkness will be stripped away and we will stand in the bright glory of the Lord’s presence, seeing him as he is.  “We know that when he shall appear we shall be like to him: because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3, 2).