Consubstantial means more than we think

By Tim Trainor

http://www.usccb.org/bible/
Acts 13:44-52
John 14:7-14

*WARNING*  SOME ADULT CATHOLIC CONTENT FOLLOWS

Why adult content? To catch some understanding of just what is going on it our Gospel reading today, we will need to gain some insight from the Catechism concerning the concept of "Consubstantial" 

Hum - where have I heard that word before?

To further prepare you for this potentially "arduous undertaking," I would like to have you read a short article by a Priest on reflecting on the mystery of God -- entitled "The Grace of Suspense" from page 83 of the May Magnificat lectionary. It will help us set more realistic expectations on our Gospel reflection and help us to better handle the seeming incompletion of our intellectual quest this morning to fully grasp Jesus' reply to Phillip that: "Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father!”. 

MEDITATION OF THE DAY: The Grace of Suspense

The mystery of a personal God is the source of prayer. But because his divine mystery is beyond our conception, we are likely to experience a certain strain in our reflections on his nature and truth. God seems at times to parry off our attempts to understand him, resisting our effort to take hold of him in a moment’s fragile thought. Behind this may be God’s refusal to be reduced to an item of mere thought and observation. He desires to be personally sought in love. Without love animating our seeking, no effort of thought alone gets nearer to him. What may be surprising, however, is that our passion for God can increase as we encounter his greater mystery. This spiritual passion may flame up after pondering a truth of God has, for a time, frustrated our mind. After the struggle of thought, we must accept a silencing of thought before the concealed face of God. It is a sign, perhaps, that our passion for God is intensifying in prayer….

The incomprehension is often the greater grace, more than the knowledge we may have gained of God. It protects us from resting in an intellectual comfort as the fruit of prayer or reflection and thereby halting our search for God. Other times intuition is given. The search to know God, the perpetual incompletion of this quest, teaches a deeper truth about the God of love who has become a man. We discover for ourselves how quickly an infinite light overwhelms every lesser light. Every glimpse of his truth draws us into a more piercing awareness of how little we still know. We realize, he is known even in his human Incarnation as the beloved one who stretches always beyond our understanding.

Father Haggerty, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, is currently serving at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. [From Contemplative Provocations. © 2013, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, CA. www.ignatius.com. Used with permission.]

Having laid the above foundation, let's proceed onward to our Reflection ...

Starting at John 14:7: To know Jesus is to know the Father. The text of today’s Gospel is the continuation of yesterday's Gospel — which is part of "the Last Supper Discourse." Thomas had just asked: “Master, we do not know where You are going, how can we know the way?” Jesus answers: “I AM the Way, I AM Truth and Life! No one can come to the Father except through Me.” 

(Did you catch the 'I AMs'? Didn't Steve Leininger talk to us about the use of that being explosive in Jewish circles last week?)

Well, moving on, Jesus then adds: “If you know Me, then you will also know the Father. From now on you DO know Him and have seen Him”. This is the first phrase we find in today’s Gospel as Jesus finishes up talking to Thomas. Jesus always speaks of the Father, because it was the life of the Father which animated (that is, brought life) all that He said and did. 

This constant reference to the Father by Jesus, particularity the statement, "From now on you do know Him and have seen Him,” provokes Philip’s question that we hear at the opening of today's Gospel reading.

Philip asks: “Lord, show us the Father and then we will be satisfied!” This was the desire of the disciples, the desire of many in the communities, of the beloved disciple John, the author of our Gospel. It is the desire of many people today. So, what should people do to see the Father whom Jesus speaks of so much? 
(John 14:8-11)

The response of Jesus is very beautiful and is valid even now: “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know Me! Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father!”. 

Wow. How does the Catholic Church explain this? By its teaching of the “Consubstantial Dogma.” (dogma equals "a truth revealed by God, which the magisterium of the Church has declared as binding.")

Here comes the adult Catholic content I warned you about.

If you recited the Creed before the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s, the line you indicate would have read, “Of one substance with the Father.” After Vatican II and before 2011, that phrase became, “One in being with the Father.” The original Greek word in the Creed was “single essence.” The Anglicized Latin word for this idea brings us to the current translation, "consubstantial" — a word you probably won’t hear in any context other than reciting the Creed in church.

Jesus puts it more elegantly when he declares earlier in John’s gospel, “The Father and I are one.” He makes a similar proposal in His reply to Philip in today's Gospel, when the disciple innocently asks to see the Father, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Then, again (but now with mathematical Set Theory elegance), "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me".

So, in the Creed, we now say that Jesus is consubstantial (formerly phrased as ‘one in being’) with the Father. What does this mean?

The Catholic dogma concerning the Nature of the Trinity states that all three Persons of the God Head are consubstantial, not just the Father and Son. [See CCC Para 251 note below for more background info on the Trinity] 

The term “Substance” refers to the Nature of God, to His Being or Essence. The term “consubstantial” means that each of the Three Persons entirely possesses this one Nature.

The Nature of God is One, very thoroughly One. In God, existence is the same as will is the same as knowledge is the same as justice is the same as mercy is the same as love, and so on. 

Everything that can truly be said about God is One. So in God, justice and mercy are the same. Literally, and exactly, the same. In God, His existence and His Love are (exactly) the same. If God stopped loving (which is impossible), He would (literally) cease to exist. For God, to love is to exist, and to exist is to love.

Consubstantial means that the attributes of God are not distributed among the Three Persons. The knowledge of God is an attribute of all Three Persons; it is not confined to the Son. The love of God is an attribute of all Three Persons; it is not confined to the Spirit.

So, the true things that we can say about God are His attributes: that God exists, is eternal, that He has will and knowledge, that He is: justice, mercy, love, etc.

We, on the other hand, by nature are weak and mortal finite creatures, who can be very unloving. We stand in stark contrast to His nature.

That’s the end the of Adult Consubstantial Stuff.

Therefore, because of the Church's infallible teaching, people should not think that God is far away from us, distant and unknown. Anyone who wants to know who God the Father is, or to see Him, it suffices to look at Jesus. Jesus has revealed the Father in His words and the actions of His life! “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me!” we read in today's Gospel. Through His obedience, Jesus identified Himself totally with the Father.

At every moment He did what the Father asked Him to do (Jn 5:30; 8:28-29.38). This is why, in Jesus, everything is a revelation of the Father! And the signs and works are the works of the Father! As people say: “The Son is the face of the Father!” This is why in Jesus, and for Jesus, God is in our midst.

Look at John 14:12-14, coined The Promise of Jesus. Jesus makes a promise to say that His intimacy with the Father is not His privilege only, but that it is possible for all those who believe in Him. We also, through Jesus, can succeed in doing beautiful things for others as Jesus did for the people of His time. 

He intercedes for us. Everything that we, His people, ask of Him, He, in turn, asks the Father, and always obtains it. All in order that we can do good in His Name.

We thus observe the great commandment in John's Gospel of practicing love, whenever we intercede for others, as Jesus teaches here, in our prayer.

Wrapping up now with prayer. 

In paragraph 2614 of the Catechism, we are told that ”Jesus openly entrusts to his disciples the mystery (there's that word again!) of prayer to the Father."

He reveals to them what their prayer and ours must be, once He has returned to the Father in His glorified humanity. What is new, however, is to "ask in His Name," per the last 2 sentences of our Gospel reading today ("whatever you ask in My Name, I will do"). 

Faith in the Son introduces the disciples into the knowledge of the Father, because Jesus is "the Way, and the Truth, and the Life" as he told Thomas earlier. 

Faith in His Name bears its fruit in love. Remember - John's Gospel is known as 'The Gospel of Love' because the one-and-only commandment that it gives us is: 'Love one another'. This means:

• Keeping the word and the commandments of Jesus, it means abiding with Him in the Father who, in Him so loves us that He (the Father) abides with us (via consubstantiality).
  
• In this new covenant the certitude that our petitions will be heard is founded on the words of Jesus spoken at the Last Supper. 

This helps me understand more deeply the “our” in the Our Father Prayer. I now know that when I lovingly stand with Jesus (as my Big Brother, praying in His Name), He makes it possible for me to stand with you guys (or the Our Lady of the Woods parish members, or my family) and, that His Father, lovingly welcomes and hears us when we boldly say as Jesus did, "Abba, Daddy, Father - Please give us this day our bread ..."

Also, I am to be ok with my growing (but always destined to be incomplete) penetration of the mystery of how all these loving consubstantial acts are being accomplished.

Trinity Note

CCC Para 251: In order to articulate the dogma of the Trinity, the Church had to develop her own terminology with help of certain notions of Greek/Latin philosophical origin: "substance", "person" or "hypostasis", "relation" and so on. In doing this, she did not submit the faith to human wisdom, but gave a new and unprecedented meaning to these terms, which from then on would be used to signify an ineffable mystery, "infinitely beyond all that we can humanly understand" to its members.