Jesus sees us and gives us joy – John 16:19b-25

Finishing off my Old College Lenten series on the Farewell Discourse, while we were hosting six young men and their parents for a discernment retreat.

They were scared.  The disciples had entrusted their lives to a man who was about to die.  In that upper room, Jesus had a shocking claim of good news for them: he would see them again, and they would rejoice.

My friend Abi recently had her first child, a beautiful baby boy named Jack, and she shared with me during the pregnancy what her greatest anxiety was – it wasn’t how her and her husband would cope with the huge changes to come in their lives, it wasn’t sleepless nights, it wasn’t labor; it was that first time after the birth that she would be left alone with the baby.  How would she know what to do?  Of course, that time eventually came.  After the birth, once she had come home from the hospital, and friends and family had left, after a while her husband had to leave too to go to the store.  She took a deep breath to try and calm her nerves, and then looked down at the impossibly precious bundle in her arms. Jack looked back at her.  He couldn’t smile yet, but he could look with love. At that moment, Abi felt no anxiety, only joy.

We want to see Jesus, but it’s his loving searching gaze that gives us joy.  “I will see you again, and you will rejoice.”

That invitation is the Christian life: not an invitation for us to catch a fleeting glimpse of a God who’s too transcendent for relationship, like going celebrity-spotting.  No, an invitation to be seen, and to rejoice.

That’s the invitation our community wants to help young men who enter into discernment and formation with us to respond to.  Know yourself as seen by God, let Him search you.  Know the gifts given and the call to share them; know the sin and the mighty hand with which he tenderly wipes them away; come to know yourself more clearly and God more deeply.  How does God see you?  That’s the million dollar question, and there’s no short-cut to answering it; there’s a way, and that way is the self-sacrificing way of Christ.

Having Christ born in you is scary. There’s a brutal disquieting honestly involved in discernment and formation that constitutes serious labor pains.  But, to know yourself as seen by God, and to see His eye take shape around your reflection: that’s the deepest joy.