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Rev. Robert Ketcham
Upon returning from the parish of Saint James in Medugorje, having prayed there for the better part of three weeks with thousands from all over the world, and having rejoiced to join them – young and old – in confessing sins, praying the Rosary, adoring the Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament and receiving him at Mass with joy, I feel called only to say that the place is remarkable. Whatever the future holds for Medugorje and its relationship with the Church, I hope that you can all experience such prayer in your own parishes one day.
You will forgive me for not purporting to describe the actual experience of Medugorje with words, since the Church discerns that there are none yet for it, though one may be justified in suggesting that the Eternal and Incarnate Word, Jesus, would suffice.
And yet there is present, in our life of faith, the undeniable workings of Our Lady whose words and actions today are an extension of the words that she speaks to us in Cana: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5). Even now, she directs her entire being to the proclamation of the greatness of the Lord (cf. Lk 1:46). And in glorifying the Lord it is she who is made glorious.
She is glorious because she allows everything that she does to be seen by God (cf. Jn 3:21). Every movement of her heart, every word and action, is an invitation to God to see and love in her what he sees and loves in his Son. And this is her joy: to live a life of complete openness to him who created her. She knows no worry or despair, no desire to criticize or denounce since she has only ever allowed herself to be seen by him; she knows him to be trustworthy and almighty. His gaze is formative. In a sense, it hosts reciprocal knowledge. When we invite him to see us as we are, he allows and enables us to see him as he is. Should we allow him only a glimpse of our selves, we would be afforded only a glimpse of him. But if we open ourselves to him as Our Lady opens herself to him, we will come to know him even as she knows him.
 This is the beginning of Christian freedom for you and for me: to allow ourselves to be seen by God, to come out from under the cover of the fig leaves of our duplicity (cf. Gen 3:7), to no longer hide from God, to lay down our arms, to surrender to his will. Life flows from this freedom, sweetness flows from this life, and hope from this sweetness.
In keeping with the spirit of The Year for Priests, consider the encounter that the Apostle, Saint Bartholomew (Nathaniel), had with Our Lord and how he was able to recognize and follow Christ because of his having been seen by him. Philip introduced the two, but the two had met before. Jesus had seen Nathaniel under the fig tree, even before Philip called him (cf. Jn 1:48).
 O tremendous mystery! Tell us: what were you doing under the fig tree, Nathaniel? Were you praying? Were you praying to the God of Moses and the prophets (cf. Jn 1:45)? Were you inviting him to see into your heart, a sort of holy rebellion against our first parents’ having hidden themselves from God under those same fig leaves? O most admirable Apostle, in whom there was never any guile (cf. Jn 1:47), tell us, what were you doing that enabled Jesus to see you as you were. Tell us, that we might learn to let him see us in the same way.
“If you would only invite him to see you as you are, you would immediately begin to see him as he is, an infinitely merciful, divine physician who operates on the soul with a gentle, towardly swiftness. You would see that everything he has ever done or willed was for you and for me, for he himself said in our hearing, ‘I came down from Heaven not to do my own will, but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me: that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day’ (Jn 6:38,39).”
Nathaniel, tell him to look into our hearts that we might see him and be raised as you have been.
“You must invite him. The invasion of his divinity has brought you this far; he has inspired within you an interest in my own encounter with him. But the intimacy you are seeking is precisely that; it is intimacy. It is not a place that I can go with you. It is between you and him, just as it was between me and him under the fig tree”.
Thank you, Nathaniel.
“Don’t thank me; thank the one who was the first to open her heart to him. If she did not open her heart to his invitation and allow him to enter into her, no invitation on our part would even be possible.”
It’s almost as if we go…
“Yes, to Jesus through Mary. Thank her. We do.”
in Jesus and Mary,
Father Robert
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