INVISIBLE GOD?

Homily for Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter 09 May 2020, John 14:7-14

In my younger years, one of the serial television programs that I avidly followed was “The Invisible Man.” I googled a little about it and found out that it was actually based on a much older science fiction novel by H.G. Wells. It was about a scientist who supposedly invented a way to make the human body invisible. He successfully carried out the procedure on himself, but failed in his attempt to reverse it. And so he needed to put on an external appearance in order to make himself visible. And to become invisible, all he needed was to take it all off.

I realize that most people think of God that way—an invisible God. And the incarnation of Jesus Christ is also understood by some people as a mere external appearance. In fact there was a heresy that held this kind of doctrine of the incarnation in the first four centuries of Christianity. It was called DOCETISM. Its adherents believed that “the historical and bodily existence, and above all the human form of Jesus, was a mere semblance without any true reality, that Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his human form was an illusion.”

In our Gospel today, we are told that Philip posed this request to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father and that is enough.” The answer that follows makes you feel that Jesus is annoyed by the question. He says, “What? Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever sees me sees the Father, so how can you say ‘Show us the Father?’” And then he proceeds to explain to that if they could not believe that the Father is visible in him, perhaps they should at least believe that he is visible in his works?

More and more, I am inclined to think that one of our big problems in this world is our inability to visualize God. Perhaps we are more comfortable with the idea that God is invisible because we have a problem with the fact that all visible things in this world are passing.

Maybe the best clue to the visualization of God is LOVE. St. Augustine says in Latin, “UBI CARITAS DEUS IBI EST.” (Where there is love, there is God.) But love, even if we presuppose it to be a spiritual experience, is not real until it is made visible in the way we live, in the way we treat each other, in the way we build family and community. Love becomes most visible and incarnate in people themselves who learn unconditional self-giving, in lived values that defy time and space.

I have said on other occasions that the true atheists in this world are not those without religion but those without love. Perhaps, in addition, I can also say that the true atheists are those who make God unreal, esoteric and invisible, those who cannot accept the mystery of incarnation, the mystery of the God who actually makes himself visible in Jesus Christ and in Christ´s continuing presence in his body, the Church.

We also make God unreal and invisible when we just padlock him inside our Churches like a relic of the past and make him totally irrelevant to the daily lives of people. This now reminds me of the speech that got Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina elected as Pope Francis. He said, “Sometimes I imagine Jesus knocking at the doors of our Churches not from outside but from within, knocking so that we can open our doors and let him out into the world.”

Our first reading today talks about the decision of the apostles, after they are rejected by pure-blooded elite of circumcised Jews, who alone were allowed inside the synagogues. Paul and his companions realized that the majority of those who were interested in their message were not inside but outside the synagogues. Mga miron. They were mostly made up of so-called proselytes, Gentile converts who were also attracted to the Word of God, but were not fully accepted and integrated into the inner circles of elite Jewish believers because they were considered impure, because they were not circumcised, they did not follow strict food regulations nor observe the Sabbath day and other rules in the Torah.

Paul shifted his proclamation from the select few, the synagoue insiders, to the onlookers, iyung tinatawag sa Tagalog na “MGA MIRON”, the outsiders who also showed interest in their message about a God made visible by the person, the life and ministry, the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I feel that something like this is happening all over again in this time of pandemic. Because of digital technology, we are going beyond the boundaries of our parishes, vicariates and dioceses in order to reach more people out there. I agree, the virtual is never meant to serve as a replacement of the physical Church. But if it opens doors and allows the Word of God to take flesh and become visible and in as many persons, families and communities and touch base with concrete human lives, why not?

Dear followers of this Eucharist livestreamed Online, may the spiritual communion that binds us together from different parts of the country and the world continue to transform us. May it take flesh and become visible in our lives, our works, our families and communities like little seeds that have been sown and are now growing on many different types of soil, or like leaven that is now making a mass of dough rise.