The hour that is coming and now is

Mulier, venit hora et nunc est, quando veri adoratores adorabunt Patrem in spiritu et veritate (John 4:23). This comes from Saint John's Gospel. I am taking one sentence from a long discourse. Our Lord said: 'Woman, the hour comes and now is, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, and the Father seeks such people.'

Taking the opening words, 'the hour comes and now is': whoever wants to worship the Father must take himself into eternity in his desires and hopes. There is one part of the soul, the highest part, that stands above time and knows nothing of time or of the body. What happened a thousand years ago, days spent a thousand years back, are no further off in eternity than this moment I am passing through now. The day that is coming a thousand years from now, or as many years ahead as you can count, is no more distant in eternity than this very instant I am in.

He says that true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and in truth. What is truth? Truth is a most noble thing. If God could turn away from truth, I would hold fast to truth and let God go. But God is truth, and the things in time, the things God created, are not truth.

He says, 'they worship the Father.' How many people, sad to say, worship creatures and load themselves down with them, fools that they are. As surely as you pray to God for creatures, you are praying for your own ruin, for no sooner is a creature a creature than trouble and bitterness follow, wrong and distress. These people get what they deserve, with their wrongs and their bitterness. Why? Because they prayed for it.

I have sometimes said that whoever goes looking for God and looking for something else along with God does not find God. But whoever seeks God alone, in truth, does not find God alone. He finds along with God everything God has to give. Are you looking for God while seeking your own good, your own profit? Then in truth you are not seeking God. 'True worshippers worship the Father,' he says, and he says it rightly. If you ask a virtuous man, 'Why do you seek God?' he answers, 'Because he is God.' 'Why do you seek truth?' 'Because it is truth.' 'Why do you seek what is right?' 'Because it is right,' and with such people all is well. Things here in time each have their cause. Ask a man why he eats, and he says, 'For strength.' Ask why he sleeps, and he gives the very same reason. And so it goes with everything in time. But ask a good man, 'Why do you love God?' He says, 'I do not know, for God's sake.' 'Why do you love the truth?' 'For the truth's sake.' 'Why do you love what is right?' 'For righteousness' sake.' 'Why do you love the good?' 'For the good's sake.' 'Why do you live?' 'In faith, I do not know. I simply like living.'

A philosopher says: whoever has once been touched by truth, by righteousness, by goodness, could never turn away from them again, not even for an instant, even if it meant the pains of hell. Whoever is moved by these three things, truth, righteousness, and goodness, can no more leave them than God can leave his own Godhood.

A philosopher says that goodness has three branches. The first is use, the second is enjoyment, and the third is fittingness. As for his words, 'they worship the Father,' why does he say 'the Father'? Seek God alone, and you will find with God everything he gives. It is the plain truth, true of necessity, a truth written down though no less true if it were never written, that if God had more, he could not keep it from you. He would have to show it to you, to give it to you, and, as I sometimes say, he gives it to you as a birth.

Philosophers say the soul has two faces. Her upper face gazes always at God, and her lower face looks somewhat downward, giving life to the senses. The upper face, which is the summit of the soul, stands in eternity and has nothing to do with time. It knows nothing of time or of the body. I have explained elsewhere how hidden in this lies, as it were, the source of all good, a shining light that is always shining, a burning flame that is always burning, and this flame is none other than the Holy Spirit.

Philosophers say that out of the summit of the soul flow two powers. One is will, the other is intellect, and the perfection of these powers lies in the sovereign power of intellect. This never rests. It does not want God as Holy Spirit, nor as Son either. It flees the Son. It does not want God as God. Why? Because as God he has a name. Even if there were a thousand gods, it would push through them all, wanting to reach the place where he has no name at all. It wants something nobler, something better, than God as a thing with a name. What does it want, then? It does not know. It would rather have him. 'Lord, show us the Father,' Philip cries, 'and we will be satisfied.' It wants him as the living core of kindness, it wants him as the dripping richness of marrow, it wants him as the root, the very source of goodness. In this way he is simply Father.

Our Lord says: 'No one knows the Father but the Son, nor the Son but the Father.' To truly know the Father, we must be the Son. I have set down these three statements, take them like three sharp grapes and drink after them. First, if we are Son, we must have the Father. No one can say he is a son unless he has a father, and no one is a father unless he has a son. If his father has died, he still says, 'he was my father.' If his son has died, he still says, 'he was my son.' The son's life depends on the father, and the father's on the son, and so no one can say, 'I am the Son,' unless he has the Father, and he is truly Son whose every work is done out of love there. Second, what makes a man most truly Son is evenness of mind. Being sick, he would as soon be sick as well, as soon be well as sick. His friend dies: 'In God's name.' He loses an eye: 'In God's name.' Third, it belongs to the Son to bow his head to no one but the Father. This is truly a royal power, beyond time and without place, and because it is beyond time it both holds all time within it and is the whole of time, and the smallest trace of this power that is beyond time makes a man rich indeed, for things on the far side of the world are no more distant to this power than things present here. It is of such people he says, 'the Father seeks them.'

See here, God loves us so much, God presses upon us so much, because God cannot work until the soul is stripped and cleared of creatures, and the plain truth is that God is bound by necessity to cherish us, as though his Godhood itself were at stake, and in fact it is. God can no more do without us than we can do without him. Indeed, even if we turned away from God, it would be impossible for God to turn his back on us. I vow I will not pray to God for gifts, nor worship him for the gifts he gives, but I will ask him to make me worthy to receive him and to worship him for the very essence and nature that he has, the nature that must give. Whoever would take this away from God would take away his very life, his very being. That we may in this way truly be Son, may the truth of which I speak help us. Amen.