Daily Reading
First Reading
Revelation 21:9b-14
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites; on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
Psalm
salm 145:10-11, 12-13, 17-18
All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord,
and all your faithful shall bless you.
They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom,
and tell of your power,
to make known to all people your mighty deeds,
and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
and your dominion endures throughout all generations.
The Lord is faithful in all his words,
and gracious in all his deeds.
The Lord is just in all his ways,
and kind in all his doings.
The Lord is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.
Gospel Reading
John 1:45-51
Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
Reflection
Friends, in a conversation with Jesus in today’s Gospel, Nathanael (usually identified with the apostle Bartholomew) makes the earliest New Testament profession of faith in Christ’s divinity: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God.” Faith is the virtue upon which Christianity rests and is the capacity to see beyond the senses to a deeper or higher reality.
There is an anticipation of faith in Plato’s parable of the cave, in which a man escapes from a cavern where he had been forced to see only flickering shadows on the wall. When he emerges from the darkness, he is blinded by the intensity of the sunlight. When his eyes adjust, he surveys a new world of depth and color.
In a similar way, Christianity holds that God’s revelation draws us beyond what we can know and introduces us to a dimension of being vibrating at a higher pitch. To be a person of faith is to know that the universe of the senses is but the tip of the iceberg, a gateway. And it is to resist the idolatry of Enlightenment rationalism, which tells us that only superstition and obscurantism lie beyond what we human beings can measure.