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At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the
Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have
revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious
will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one
knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and
anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’ (Luke 10:21-22)
Is it any wonder?
There are stories where
the face of the man peeks through, and you catch hints of who Jesus really was,
what made him happy, sad or angry. You see his human face, quite apart from the
labels and doctrines attached to him through the centuries.
One story is when his
friends return from their mission. He’d sent them to villages on the way ahead
of him to teach and touch, bless and heal, to reveal the kind of kingdom Earth
had never seen, a kingdom where God, in great mercy, ruled … everything.
They gather around him and
share the extraordinary joy of freeing human bodies and hearts from oppressions
that bound them. They had witnessed the startled wonder in the eyes of those who
never imagined they would taste the joy of feeling truly alive and human again.
Jesus hears all this … and
smiles. The Spirit within him swells and soars until it bursts his soul in
ecstatic prayer. He smiles with delight at the joy of his friends.
The moment is fixed in
my mind. I want to hold this image before me every moment of every day that I
breathe the sweet air of Earth … and bask in the exquisite joy I see, until it
fills me.
For in his smile I,
too, know the Father, the Incomprehensible Mystery, whose love heals the broken
and turns hopelessness and sorrow upside down.
Seeing that smile, is
it any wonder that we love him?
