Feast of Saints Philip and James, Apostles

Lectionary: 561

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.

Today’s reading from Saint John's gospel refers directly to Saint Philip, whom we celebrate today. As Catholics practice the faith these many centuries later, in many lands distant and unknown to first century Christians, we feel compelled to maintain our contact with the Apostles and through them, to Jesus.

Without them, our religion is only spiritual, which is to say without form or definition. Spiritual, as I hear the word used, is whatever the speaker wants it to be. As Humpty Dumpty scornfully said to Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." A spiritual religion suffers the same shapelessness.

Christianity must be rooted in some form of ‘apostolic succession,” honoring the life of the spirit while retaining its physical form. The church is like the man who may be measured in inches when he is born but grows to adulthood. He retains the same number of fingers and toes, and the same essential shape as the infant. He may undergo many reforms and reformations, both physical and spiritual, but his history is contained and integrated within his body.

God in his wisdom allows some human beings to live long enough to see "pendulum swings" from liberal to conservative and back again to liberal. In American religion, historians tell us and elders assure us, "What the parents tried to forget, the children try to remember." Or, "The more things change, the more things stay the same." 

Many of us live long enough to see that the reforms of our youth actually changed very little. What we thought were new frogs were only tadpoles. Our brilliant new ideas were only further evolutions of previous developments. As one old Veteran told me, "The Mass has not changed at all!" 

Celebrating the Apostles we thank God that the Holy Spirit keeps us faithful to the Gospel generation after generation, century after century, millennium after millennium.