Monday, May 3, 2010

5th Week of Easter, Monday, 03-05-10 Feast of Ss. Philip and James, Apostles

1 Cor 15:1-8 / John 14:6-14            (2019)

From the gospel accounts, we know quite a bit about the characters of some of the apostles like Peter, James and John.

But with apostles like Philip and James (son of Alphaeus) we only have snippets.

Yet from these snippets, we can make out a picture of who they were.

Philip was the type who wanted to see the reality before going any further.

That was why in the gospel, he asked Jesus to let them see the Father, and then they will be satisfied and hence can proceed to the next step or the next stage.

So even when at a much earlier in the gospel, when Philip told Nathanael about Jesus, his persuasion was just a gentle "Come and see" (John 1:46)

That was Philip. He needed to see first before he could move on and ask others to do the same.

Philip and James saw Jesus but they took a long time before they came to really know Him and to understand Him and eventually loving Him.

And when they came to love Jesus, they also proclaimed Him and made Him known.

Such is also our spiritual journey. We may know quite a bit about Jesus, but there is certainly much more that will be revealed to us.

So how we live our lives and how we proclaim our faith, that will show how much we know Jesus and how much we love Him.

Let us always pray that we will grow deeper in our love for Jesus.