Fully Human; Fully Divine

Homily for the Memorial of St. Athanasius

For people like you and me who are exposed to the Scriptures every day, it is not uncommon for us to subconsciously say to ourselves when the reading begins, “Oh, I know this one. We just heard it a few days ago.” There is, however, a danger if we take that attitude about the Scriptures.

The readings for this feast of St. Philip and James the Less present us with this kind of problem. In the first reading, we hear St. Paul preaching or proclaiming the kerygma of the early Christian community. It sounds very much like the creed that we profess every Sunday so there is the danger that we might take this reading for granted because it is so familiar to us. If, however, we keep certain historical facts in mind – for instance, the fact that all of St. Paul’s letters were written before any of the Gospels and before any of the ecumenical councils – we realize that St. Paul is providing the early Christian community with the basic beliefs held by Christians.

The passage from St. John’s Gospel presents us with a similar reaction. As a matter of fact, we heard this reading quite recently as we are in the Easter Season and are using the Gospel of St. John for these seven weeks so it is possible that we don’t hear the statement that Jesus makes in answering Philip. He says, “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” (John 14:9). Scripture scholars look at this statement as one of the most staggering statements to be found in human literature, let alone in the Scriptures.

This statement points to the distinctive claim of Christianity: that to know who God is, what God is like, we need only look at a human being, Jesus Christ. What we see in Jesus corrects and improves upon anything our reason can tell us of God. While we might be tempted to use the example of his wrath when cleansing the temple or his rebuke of Peter to bless or justify our own impatience and anger, ultimately we benefit much more from other elements.

Above all, in Jesus we see God sharing our sorrow and suffering, our fear of pain and death, our radical aloneness, our sense of never being totally understood, our sense of abandonment at times. In that picture we have of Jesus we are consoled with the assurance that God himself in Jesus has shared all this, is with us in such experiences. And, finally, because the Jesus who manifests the Father is also fully human, reflection on his life and death can help us counter our tendency to think we especially have been singled out by an unfair God or by others for persecution and suffering. Jesus, who shows us God, also represents us before God; as every man and woman, he illustrates that the pains of daily life are simply part of being human.

In our Communion at this altar we are strengthened in our ability to face daily ills, pains, and problems. United to Christ, we can express his compassion toward our fellow human beings.