Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter

On that day you will ask in my name,

and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you.
For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me
and have come to believe that I came from God.

Why would Jesus not ask the Father for us? This is an astonishing statement and it throws a whole new light on our relationship with God. Suddenly, it seems Jesus steps out of the way between us and God. Whether that is an accurate statement theologically, it makes the point of our unexpected, unearned and undeserved intimacy with the unknowable, ineffable God.

Last week, during the Office of Readings for Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter, I came across this passage by Blessed Isaac of Stella, abbot:

And so, according to this well-known reading of Scripture, neither the body without the head, nor the head without the body, nor the head and body without God make the whole Christ.

When all are united with God they become one God. The Son of God is one with God by nature; the Son of Man is one with him in his person; we, his body, are one with him sacramentally. Consequently those who by faith are spiritual members of Christ can truly say that they are what he is: the Son of God and God himself. But what Christ is by his nature we are as his partners; what he is of himself in all fullness, we are as participants. Finally, what the Son of God is by generation, his members are by adoption, according to the text: "As sons you have received the Spirit of adoption, enabling you to cry, Abba, Father."

You can see in these words why the Church continually celebrates the sacraments. Our liturgies are more than pious reminders of our faith or half-hearted attempts to remember our roots in the midst of a twisted and depraved generation.

Rather, through Baptism, Eucharist, Confirmation, Penance, Priesthood, Marriage and the Anointing of the Sick we become “what he is: the Son of God and God himself.” If our sins continually remind us of our human failings and our entanglement in institutional evil, the sacraments lift us into an alternative reality that is more real than this world.

Of course, Jesus has not stepped out of the way between us and God. Rather, he is the way, the truth and the life that makes our life real in God and in this world. Without him we are indeed nothing, salt without savor, noisy gongs and clanging cymbals.