FROM DARKNESS TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF TRUTH


THURSDAY, THIRD WEEK OF EASTER

Act 8:26-40; Ps 66:8-9,16-17,20; Jn 6:44-51

From Darkness of Error to Truth

The Catechism drawn from the scriptures teaches that God made us to know, love, and serve him in this world to be happy with him eternally. The doctrine aptly summarised in this short response is profound. If God’s purpose for making us is primarily that we may know him, then the knowledge of God is essential for our fulfilment. Our primary duty on earth is to make the necessary effort to acquire the saving knowledge of God. God the Father provided the things needed to possess saving knowledge of him. The whole of creation is the first provision he made for man to acquire the knowledge of his creator. He gave his word to enlighten and guide us to the needed knowledge. Thus, our intellectual and spiritual desire to know is the darkness he created in us, corresponding to the light of things given existence by his word. These created lights were to guide and prepare us to receive his word. The reception and keeping of his word culminate in the indwelling of the Eternal Word through the Holy Spirit. The distraction of man from following the word of God in the Garden of Eden by the evil one caused our misinformation and malformation. The serpent drew man away from following the lead of God to the Son, the Eternal Word, in whom we have knowledge and life.

Because the serpent led us away from following God through the sensible things presented to us, God caused his Son to assume our human nature and appear in physical form to bring us back to our spiritual end. Therefore, the humanity of Jesus Christ is our way back to the Father and his purpose for creating us. “No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me, and I will raise him up at the last day.” The Father who created us remains in us by the original desires or hunger he put in us. By these desires or hunger, he draws us to His Son, the Eternal Word, who is the knowledge of the Father. By satisfying our desires and hunger in a limited way through creatures, the Father guides us gently to his Son, with whom we are satisfied. We see creatures and enjoy the welfare they provide without knowing they represent the providential Father in their limited ways. We must never fail to thank the Father for the temporal goods we enjoy on our way to the reality of the Son of God. “Not that anybody has seen the Father, except the one who comes from God: he has seen the Father. I tell you solemnly, everybody who believes has eternal life.” Now that the Father has sent his Son to appear in our visible form and demonstrated his divinity through his resurrection from death, we must believe to receive the spiritual life the Son of God nourishes. “I am the bread of life.” The heavenly bread is inaccessible without faith in the Son of Man.

The story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch demonstrates the difficulty of accessing this spiritual bread without faith. Ignorant of the Son of Man, the Ethiopian eunuch read the prophetic book of Isaiah in vain. His desire to understand the spiritual truth is the work of the Father drawing him to Jesus Christ, which the Holy Spirit communicated to Philip. The eunuch encountered Jesus Christ through Philip, who baptised him. “The eunuch turned to Philip and said, ‘Tell me, is the prophet referring to himself or someone else?’ Starting, therefore, with this text of scripture Philip proceeded to explain the Good News of Jesus to him.” Jesus Christ has risen from the dead; he lives now in his Gospel and in all who believe the Gospel through which they share his life in the Holy Spirit. Through the Gospel, Philip preached to the eunuch, who was baptised into the life of Jesus Christ by profession of faith in the Gospel he heard. “I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.  Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” We eat the bread by faith in his word, which turns the bread into his flesh and the wine into his blood and makes his soul and divinity present to us. The flesh feeds on the physical, but the spirit feeds on the spiritual—the Eternal Word.

Let us pray: Almighty ever-living God, let us feel your compassion more readily during these days when, by your gift, we have known it more fully, so that those you have freed from the darkness of error may cling more firmly to the teachings of your truth. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. 

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