Many prophets and righteous people longed to see

26 JULY (Mt 13,16-17)

What Jesus says to his disciples today, is a truth attested by all the Ancient Scripture. The desire to see the Lord, God, was a strong yearning in the heart of his true worshipers. Renowned more than any other is the dialogue between Moses and the Lord. Moses asks to be able to see the face of his God. This grace is not granted him.

Moses said to the Lord, “You, indeed, are telling me to lead this people on; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘You are my intimate friend,’ and also, ‘You have found favor with me.’ Now, if I have found favor with you, do let me know your ways so that, in knowing you, I may continue to find favor with you. Then, too, this nation is, after all, your own people.” “I myself,” the Lord answered, “will go along, to give you rest.” Moses replied, “If you are not going yourself, do not make us go up from here. For how can it be known that we, your people and I, have found favor with you, except by your going with us? Then we, your people and I, will be singled out from every other people on the earth.” The Lord said to Moses, “This request, too, which you have just made, I will carry out, because you have found favor with me and you are my intimate friend.” Then Moses said, “Do let me see your glory!” He answered, “I will make all my beauty pass before you, and in your presence I will pronounce my name, ‘LordD’; I who show favors to whom I will, I who grant mercy to whom I will. But my face you cannot see, for no man sees me and still lives. Here,” continued the Lord, “is a place near me where you shall station yourself on the rock. When my glory passes I will set you in the hollow of the rock and will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand, so that you may see my back; but my face is not to be seen.”

The Lord said to Moses, “Cut two stone tablets like the former, that I may write on them the commandments which were on the former tablets that you broke. Get ready for tomorrow morning, when you are to go up Mount Sinai and there present yourself to me on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you, and no one is even to be seen on any part of the mountain; even the flocks and the herds are not to go grazing toward this mountain.” Moses then cut two stone tablets like the former, and early the next morning he went up Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him, taking along the two stone tablets. Having come down in a cloud, the Lord stood with him there and proclaimed his name, “Lord.” Thus the Lord passed before him and cried out, “The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, continuing his kindness for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin; yet not declaring the guilty guiltless, but punishing children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation for their fathers’ wickedness!” Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship. Then he said, “If I find favor with you, O Lord, do come along in our company. This is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins, and receive us as your own” (Ex 33, 12-34,9).

God cannot be possessed by a man, not even with a vision. God must always be sought, desired, thought and heard. The search for the Lord must be continuous. He is the Infinite, the Eternal. Never might human mind be satisfied by what he already knows of Him. However, man cannot do this search for God alone. His mind is too small and his heart too cramped. He needs the Holy Spirit. He is the one who must lead him into all the truth over time as well as eternity. The thinking mind is called to always transcend itself. The mind passes with all its high and deep reflections, God remains. Theologies, philosophies and human thoughts about God go down. The eternal truth towards which we must always walk remains.

“But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

Christ Jesus came. He is the God with a human face, when he took on our flesh, having he made himself a man. This is our task, our mission: always seeing in him our true and only God. Once, the labor of man was the transition from the transcendent God to the God acting in history. Now instead from the God who works in history to the transcendent, infinite and eternal God. Today, our Christian vocation is that of seeing God, the true God, in the disfigured face of the Crucified. It is the mystery of mysteries.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints give us a correct vision of faith.