Homily: May 3 2016 - Saints Philip and James & the Face of Christ

St. Phillip said to our Lord, “Master, show us the Father; and that will be enough for us.”  Jesus answers with a very gentle rebuke, he says, that’s why I’ve come, that’s what I’ve been doing, that who I am, I show you the Father because the Father and I are one.

Everything the savior does for us is for this purpose: to show us the Father, to reconcile us with the Father, to lead us to the Father, that we may be with him and his Father in paradise forever.  If we wish to know the Face of God, we but merely have to gaze at the Face of Jesus.  Saint Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict would often urge the faithful to contemplate the face of Jesus. Pope Francis opened announced the Year of Mercy by saying, “Jesus Christ is the face of the father’s mercy.” Francis invited the Church, along with the Blessed Virgin Mary, “to contemplate the face of mercy, her Son Jesus.”

Pope Francis wrote, the primary task of the Church “is to introduce everyone to the great mystery of God’s mercy by contemplating the face of Christ. The Church is called above all,” he said, “to be a credible witness to mercy, professing it and living it as the core of the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

Philip didn’t quite initially “get it”: Philip didn’t realize that the Father was already being shown to Him by Jesus—and the love and in the face of Jesus. So many in the world don’t “get it” either—that the face of God is being shown to them by the witness of the Church.  Perhaps, that’s because we perhaps always aren’t the most credible of witnesses—mercy is not always being shown in our faces, is it?

The Gospel writer does not tell us whether Philip grasped the full meaning of Jesus’ sentence.  But there is no doubt that he dedicated the rest of whole life entirely to Christ.  It is said that Phillip was first to bring the Gospel to Greece and then to Frisia, the area along the North Sea from the Netherlands to Denmark.  It is there that he was martyred for the faith.

Along with Phillip we honor the Apostle James the son of Alphaeus today, often called James the lesser, not because he was less holy or shorter in stature or less important than James the Son of Zebedee, but because much less is known and written about him. 

Most importantly, these men were faithful in handing on the Gospel; they worked for the spread of the Gospel with their whole lives.  They may have been “late bloomers” so to speak, but they came to give everything in the establishment and edification of the Church. 

We are invited to turn our gaze more closely to Christ, so that we can be transformed into the evangelists, the apostles of mercy, we are meant to be. 

Pope Francis calls us this year to “open our hearts to those living on the outermost fringes of society”, to reflect on and practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and to be cheerful as we perform them. 

We turn our gaze to the face of Christ, that others may come to recognize Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.