Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus declares his mutual indwelling with God: “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?”
Charles Williams, a friend of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, stated that the master idea of Christianity is “coinherence,” what he described as mutual indwelling.
We sometimes forget that we are all interconnected. Yet how do we often identify ourselves? Almost exclusively through the naming of relationships: we are sons, brothers, daughters, mothers, fathers, members of organizations, or members of the Church.
Read the Gospel today and see how Jesus identifies himself. Jesus reveals the coinherence that obtains within the very existence of God. “Master,” Philip says to him, “show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Jesus replies, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
How can this be true, unless the Father and the Son coinhere in each other? Though Father and Son are really distinct, they are utterly implicated in each other by a mutual act of love. As Jesus says, “The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.”