Fr. John-Mary: Father, in the last program, you showed us how God reveals himself in his saints who are alive today. But, more than anyone else, God is present in Jesus Christ, and we recall these words of the Apostle Philip: "Lord, show us the Father and that will suffice". Can you speak to us a little of how God reveals himself in Jesus Christ?

Fr. M.D. Philippe: Practically speaking, if these saints, these witnesses, those who are, in a way, clothed by the spirit of Christ and the spirit of the Father, are still present in our midst, it is because there has been this marvelous gift which the Father has made of his Son, that God the Creator made of Jesus: "God had so loved the World that He had sent his Son". Jesus is the Father's emissary for us. The prophets have all come as emissaries of God, possessing in them something which was beyond them: all the great prophets of the First Covenant: Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, all of them, are witnesses, envoys. And it is specified that, for us, Jesus is really the emissary of the Father; St. John always keeps showing us that Jesus is the envoy and the faithful witness. But Jesus is also the Beloved Son. Only the Beloved Son can fully reveal to us what the Father is. An envoy reveals what a lord, a master is, what someone who has the authority is; but a son, especially he is the Beloved Son, or even a friend, reveals to us his secrets. The Son is not only sent to fulfill a task; He has come for that purpose, but He has come for something still greater. He has come to reveal to us the secrets that He has received from the Father and that the Father wants to show us. It is for that reason that He does not hesitate to say to his apostles: "You are no longer my servants, but my friends". Each Christian, in his Christian life, becomes aware of this double relationship: he is at the same time an envoy, a servant, who ought to accomplish a task, but he also understands at a given moment that this is not enough, that there is something even greater: this bond of love which he ought to realize in his most intimate heart, with Jesus and with the Father. It is perhaps there that we touch the great secret of our Christian life: Jesus is a witness of the truth, he said it, and he said that before Pilate, therefore before someone who didn't have Christian faith, someone who exercised authority and who had the sense of this truth, a truth which is completely unique: He is the Truth. He is the Truth because He is the Beloved Son of the Father who is love. He reveals to us this absolute goal of our Christian life which is the love of the Father for his Son, and the love of the Son for his Father. It is this covenant which goes beyond all others, and it is a very simple covenant because it is a covenant of love. But it is also a covenant which is demanding above all other. The demand coming from the Law is only something which prepares us for this really greater demand which comes from love. And truly, for us as believers, as Christians, Jesus is the Beloved Son of the Father. This name is very powerful, and I like it very much in Greek: the "agapetos". Jesus is the friend "par excellence", he is the one who has been loved the most and who is always the most loved, because this love is a divine love which is always real. Jesus is the one most loved by the Father. The entire physiognomy of Jesus, his entire earthly life in the midst of us, whether concerning his hidden life, concerning his public life, or concerning especially the mystery of the Cross and of the Resurrection, all this shows us the mystery of the agapetos, of the Beloved Son. Jesus is not the beloved of men, but the Beloved of the Father. He is the Beloved One, and it is indeed this name which sums up everything: we ought always to begin from there and come back to that. The whole of Jesus' life shows us the particular modalities, special words, or particular gestures through which this name is revealed to us: Jesus is the Beloved One. It is perhaps for that reason that Saint John wanted to show that the last and ultimate moment of Revelation is the wound of Jesus' heart which is a gesture. In the same way, the last words that Jesus addressed to us were his cry of thirst. This cry helps us to understand how this wound of the heart is an extraordinary gesture, a gesture which was not obligatory, but which was given for a very special purpose. It is a gesture which wounds Jesus' heart in order to unveil to us the unique depth of love which is hidden in the heart of Christ and which exercises a very strong attraction on us: Jesus is not only a perfect being, a being who is irreproachable in himself, Jesus is not only an innocent being, He is the Beloved one, He is Love, and it is for this reason that He attracts us. He states it himself: "When I am attached to the wood, I will attract all to me". It is perhaps there that we better grasp this powerful, unique attraction that Jesus holds for us. But we must allow it to happen to us, and we must have a strong desire to discover what is most profound in him. I would like to reflect quickly on this, since it concerns in fact the whole Gospel, and particularly the Gospel of St. John. From the very beginning, St. John tells us that the Son remains in the Father's heart. It is quite daring, and marvelous to state that the Son remains in the source, the heart of the Father, the source of all fruitfulness, the source of all love, the secret source. The Son remains in the heart of the Father, and the Son who remains in the heart of the Father, is He who is the fruit of the Father's whole contemplation, of his whole Wisdom. He is the Word, and He is also the one who is given to us. He is the one who gives us the whole mystery of the Father's fruitfulness, the whole mystery of his love. If I reflect for a moment about the Baptism of Jesus, about his Transfiguration, I am impressed by this presence of the Father; but I am even more impressed by the presence of the Father at the cross: there is a silence of the Father, and this indeed creates for us a big question about which we will try to speak. At the Baptism of Jesus, the Father says "this is the chosen One, He is my Son, my Beloved Son;" at the Transfiguration, it is the same thing, but the Father also wants us to understand that we ought to listen to Jesus, to understand him, to be eager to receive everything He says, since He is the one who teaches us about love. Jesus is the master of love, and it is He who, through his whole teaching, all his gestures, never ceases to lead us toward being beloved children of the Father: He has chosen us and it is He who has loved us first, and we should respond to his love. He has brought us near to the Father, the source of all true love. When we understand that, our whole life is changed, because we then share this deepest thirst, which in fact brings out what is deepest in us. We then have this thirst for loving and we become sure that we will never be disappointed by love. Deceptions in the order of love are what is most terrible: they demolish a heart. Someone who has given fully himself in love, and who is deceived, is deeply wounded. Jesus was deeply given over to each one of his apostles, to each one, even to Judas, and He accepted their betrayal, through love of us, in order to show us that his love is victorious even over betrayal, and that to give oneself over to him is to give oneself over to the Father. This is precisely what He said in a very powerful way to the Apostle Philip who asked him this question: "Show us the Father". Jesus answered: "Philip, he who sees me, sees the Father". This expression has an astonishing force, as if the face of the Father for us was the face of Jesus. The face of Jesus is a man's face: he is the Son of man, he is the son of Mary; he resembles his mother, as we ourselves resemble our mother. But he resembles his mother in a unique way since he had only one human heredity and since Mary was immaculate. There was therefore a unique resemblance between Jesus and his Mother. It is extraordinary to realize that the face of Jesus is the face of Mary, of the woman, of the woman "par excellence" and that his face is also the face of the Father for us. The gaze of Jesus is the gaze of the Father: looking at Jesus, being attentive to him, in his crib, this poor child's crib at Bethlehem, looking at him near Joseph in his workshop when he works, looking at him in the desert in his adoration, looking at him preaching, teaching, looking at him especially when he is completely disfigured at the cross, when he no longer has any man's face. It is always the face of the Father present in the face of Jesus, and this face is also the face of man: it is our face. God wanted to do that. God, who is our Creator, who has formed us, and who wanted us to be his masterwork, wished that the face of man become His face. I believe that it is that which Jesus wanted to teach us through this whole great Revelation in the Gospel: he is the Beloved Son of the Father, for us.

Fr. John-Mary: How can Jesus, completely disfigured on the Cross, reveal the love and glory of the Father to us, in this suffering, in this abandonment?

Fr. M.D. Philippe: It is certain that we touch there perhaps, the deepest level of God's mystery. Let us first think of the face of a little child: a mother understands right away that her little child is the most beautiful of all children, and beauty leads to love. It is a disposition for love. It is very difficult to love someone who does not shine forth in any way. Beauty leads to love; this is very true in the human order. A great philosopher, like Plato, grasped it very well: beauty is the expression of love, and it is by beauty that we are led to love. When it concerns God, we have to understand that a true human love is very near to God's love since it comes from God. Any true love comes from God. But the Love of God has something unique, it is the first love, it is a substantial love, it is a love which takes over everything. God is only Love. He is Love in his whole being, and Jesus is Love in His whole being, in His whole sensitivity. There is nothing in Christ which is profane: everything is holy because everything in him reflects the love of the Father, everything gives us the face of his Father, the physiognomy of his Father. This substantial Love has to conquer our sick heart which no longer knows how to love: there is pride in us, and pride is what stops love, especially a pride which does not want to acknowledge itself as such. We know very well that it is because of pride that we have so much difficulty in loving, because love means that we have to go beyond ourselves, that we have to give of ourselves. Jesus comes to bring us this love of the Beloved Son that he receives from the Father. As a Beloved Son, he only seeks one thing: to love the Father, to give him his love in return, and while loving the Father, to save us. Jesus came for that: he was sent to be our Savior, our Redeemer, and the Father wanted this Salvation to take place in this strongest possible way, and, I was almost going to say, in the deepest, the most eloquent, the most marvelous way. The Father, in his Wisdom, wanted this salvation to take place through the Cross. He wanted his Son, who is only Love, who never sinned, who is innocent, to take the place of the sinner. This can be only understood through love, and in a love which goes very far, since it is a love in which the Son gives himself entirely. To manifest, in a sensitive way, the absolute character of this gift, there is only one experience that can serve: death. It is quite curious: we are afraid of death because death is a sort of absolute for the senses. We cannot come back from death. We can come back from many other things. We can come back on our word, we can come back on our gestures, we can come back on a project that we are in the process of doing; all that can be taken back. But death cannot be taken back: it is an absolute in the midst of our visible world; it is a punishment which is a consequence of sin, consequence of pride. Jesus wanted to take this reality of death on himself. It is the Father who wanted it, and Jesus obeyed the Father in taking it on, in choosing to do so. He chose death with all the sufferings that are attached to it: when we really look at the death of Jesus, we understand that all deaths are present in his death: the death of the heart (betrayal), the death of the sinner (his whole body which was torn up in suffering), the mortal sadness of Agony and of sin (which is also present at the Cross), death on the political level (he is rejected by his people), death with regard to his religion (he is considered as a blasphemer); all deaths are present in his suffering. This was the most intense suffering possible: Jesus had a consciousness and a lucidity that no one else has ever had among men, because he is the Son of God; he was perfectly a man, while being the Son of God, with a unique sensitivity, a unique lucidity, a fullness of love. All sufferings were included in this love and transformed in this love. It is the privilege of divine Love to be able to use sufferings, sadness, even death, in order to be victorious over death, this consequence of sin. God is then victorious over this apparent victory of our physical world over the human spiritual world, using all that suffering in order to show that divine Love is greater than Sheol,- as it is said in Scripture -; divine Love is stronger than any death, and can even make use of death. Jesus renders death relative, while taking it on himself. Jesus gives suffering a new meaning, as he gives a new meaning to death, while taking it into himself. Death becomes then a manifestation of his absolute love for the Father. His love for the Father is so strong that it is a substantial Love. It takes hold of everything. It is so strong that it can use death and suffering to manifest itself. Of course this remains a real mystery which scandalizes us, in our sensitivities, in our reasonings, "scandal and folly," as St.Paul says; but for the believer, it is our wisdom. It is at the Cross, through the mystery of the Cross that we discover, in a new way, that God is Love and that Jesus is the Beloved Son. It was necessary for the Son to be deprived of the beauty of this human face which identified him so closely with Mary, it was necessary for him to be deprived of this splendor, so that we could enter into this substantial Love expressed through death. This Revelation is at the same time a gift: it is Jesus, who attracts us, who wants us to enter into this absolute of divine Love, the Love of the Son for his Father. It is for that reason that St. Paul said in such a powerful way that Jesus died in the obedience of the Son for his Father, in a filial obedience which took possession of him entirely. It was necessary that everything, his whole body, his whole soul capable of suffering, be turned towards the Father, in order to glorify him. Jesus says in his prayer of the Beloved Son, in Chapter l7 of St. John: "Father, the hour has come; glorify thy Son that the Son may glorify thee". Jesus glorifies the Father, and this is perhaps what best makes us understand how he is the Beloved Son: his only concern is to glorify the Father. It is as if Jesus said: you have given me a body so that I should obey you, accomplish your will, to the end, and, while accomplishing your will, glorify you; to show that, for me, in my most intimate heart, what counts most is to do your will, because your will is a will of love. Even if in our human sensitivities this divine will can crucify us, it is still a will of love, coming from a superabundance of love, from a fullness of love, which can use all sufferings, all sadness to go farther and to make us live the secret of the Son who remains in the Father's heart.

I believe that it is in this very light that we ought to understand the whole Gospel of St. John and the Synoptics. You might say through the cry of thirst of Jesus on the Cross, through this love which goes beyond any endeavor, there is an abyss of love in the heart of Jesus that goes beyond even this act of the Cross, even though it was unique and very great. The Love of Jesus' heart is not expressed fully and totally through the Cross. There is something more: this bond with the Father. It is this bond with the Father that Jesus wants to give us. His love is victorious over the Cross, and the Cross is the fruit of this love: it is the wound of Jesus' heart which manifests that. The Son reveals the love that he has for the Father by this wound of the heart. I believe that it is there that we touch upon what is unique in this great revelation of the love between the Father the Son: "Who sees me, sees the Father."