May 3, Saint Philip and Saint James, Apostles
The Way, the Truth and the Life
Jesus said to him, “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. Jn 14,6-14
At the beginning of time “the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man … Out of the ground the Lord God made various trees that were delightful to look at and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and bad … The Lord God gave man this order: ‘You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and bad. From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die” (Gn 2,8-17). Among all trees in the garden, two ones are well identified: the tree of life, which is in the middle and is therefore the most important, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, planted somewhere else. Man could eat the fruit of the first one, as well as the fruits of all the other trees, thus reaching the truth, as the gift of his communion with God. He must not eat the fruits of the second one, unless he wanted to be punished with death and estrangement from the truth. Since those far away times, men have always tried to get to know the supernatural reality as well as what is good and what evil, making any given assumptions and always contradicting one another forever, until nowadays, when a part of humanity regards as true what the majority thinks to be true.. Two thousand years ago, however, Christ made a new creation possible, which can be joined through faith and puts us back into the new garden of Eden, the kingdom of heaven. In this new spiritual reality, the tree of life, whose the fruits reveal to us the truth about God and man, is Jesus Christ. And what do we do, then, of our intelligence? Considering the first experience of mankind, it will be good to believe Jesus’s words: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”. With this act of faith, our intelligence is not set aside, but, lit by the Holy Spirit, it allows us to know the truth about God, man, creation and history. A firefly endowed with Faith can see far away and makes more light than a sun without faith.