Found the One

Found the One

Feast of Saint Bartholomew, Apostle

The angel spoke to me, saying, "Come here. I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb." He took me in spirit to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It gleamed with the splendor of God. Revelation 21:9B-11A

Philip found Nathanael and told him, "We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth." But Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." John 1:45-46

 

Bright Wings

Piety

God's Grandeur 

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

Study

“We have found the one!”  Our quest is like Philip’s discovery – to find and have a relationship with the Lord.  Sometimes, there is a lot about organized religion and the institutional church that might fail.  Our quest remains to find Jesus.  To count on Jesus.  And for Jesus to count on us.

Faith is about what we do when we leave the sanctuary and take the Gospel into the streets of the modern world. 

Now…how does Revelation fit into all this?

The “bride” is the Church.  According to a post by Fr. Matt Fish, he reminds me:

First Reading today begins: "The angel spoke to me saying, 'Come here. I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.'" (Rev 21) Remember, that Lamb is forever both slain and standing, just as the triumphant Christ forever bears his wounds. How could his bride be any different?

Action

Philip found the standing Christ at this point in his ministry.  Yet, now is when we find the slain Christ in the image of the church.  Now is when we need to stand beside the Church and her wounds as we seek healing and ways to bind her and our wounds.