Homilies & Thoughts

Absence can reveal the truth. While someone stands near us, the meaning of that life often remains scattered through ordinary days. We remember a gesture without grasping the love behind it. We hear a sentence and only later feel its full weight. After departure, the pieces begin to gather. Death, and even the approach of death, can become a revealing light.

In the quiet of the upper room, Jesus begins to shine that light. The meal is over. The feet of the disciples are still clean from his hands. Judas has slipped into the dark. Jesus remains with his friends, and the hour closing around him will soon make sense of everything he has said and done.

The upper room has the stillness that comes before grief. Jesus has spoken of departure, and the disciples feel the ground shift beneath them. Their daily life has taken shape around his presence. Now the one whose nearness has steadied them speaks as though he will soon be hidden from sight.

That apparent hiddenness is where this Gospel touches us most today. The disciples could look upon the face of Jesus. They could hear his voice without the veil of memory and meet the gaze of the Son who reveals the Father. Their confusion was real, but their privilege seems undeniable. They could see God in the flesh.

I think we all recognize that the incarnation—God becoming man—is God’s free choice. He decides to do that. Nothing compelled him or coerced him. But I do not think we always appreciate some of the consequences of that choice. Not only does he freely choose to become man; he also chooses of whom he becomes man.

He chooses the Blessed Virgin Mary. He did not have to. And in choosing her, he chooses the situation in which she lives. God could have chosen to be born among the royalty of the world. He could have been born the son of a king and lived that life. He could have been born into the leisure classes, among those who do not have to work.