“No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. ” // Matthew 11:27
It was a hot and sticky New York City summer day. You know the kind where your back sticks to the pew because it’s so darn hot? The air conditioning at my parish was broken for Mass that day and I could not begin to imagine how the friars were feeling in their vestments. Needless to say, we were all in need of a refresher—preferably a new air conditioning system.
Inside my heart, too, was sort of sticky. It felt as though things were moving too slowly inside. I was fresh off a beautiful reversion in the last year, but there was still a sort of residue in my heart. It had been a beautiful seeking of the Father and His goodness, and now I sat with what felt like no more seeking to do. In many good and beautiful ways I saw my reversion as my own pursuit of His heart, but that was only half the story.
“The Father loves you,” the friar said in his homily. He paused just long enough for my own heart to hear, The Father seeks you. Like a fresh glass of cold water I received the same truth we hear in today’s Gospel, mainly that in the last year I had not come to know Christ and the Father through my own efforts. I did not come upon God the Father in New York City by chance. No, from all eternity Christ the Son had chosen this moment in time to reveal to me the greatest secret of His heart. How refreshing!
Sister, any and all encounters with Christ and the Father are because the Blessed Trinity has looked at you in a great desire to be in relationship and communion with you and said, “Let it be.” May you have the grace today to see where Christ has chosen to reveal to you the greatest secret of His Heart, His Father. And may we have the grace to respond with that childlike gratitude for the goodness of and gift of knowing the Heart of God.