 Thank you Father Dave and thank you for coming out and coming to this retreat to refresh yourself so you could be be a blessing to to all those you serve and Father Dave makes a sound like like they had to twist my arm or something like that to make time for this conference but it is such a delight for me I never turned down the opportunity to be able to talk to priests because I love the priesthood and was myself a Protestant pastor for a number of years love the ministry of preaching and I know that you fathers are out on the front line and anything I could possibly do to give some encouragement to you that are fighting and slogging it out in spiritual battle day by day on behalf of the church militant I want to be able to do that and to be part of the encouragement process so it's real delight for me to to be with you this morning and we've got a great topic we're gonna be talking about Jesus as the face of the Father let's begin in prayer in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit amen Heavenly Spirit fall down in us now Heavenly Father send the Spirit to anoint our hearts and to anoint to these words and to open our eyes and our hearts that our hearts may burn as those men who walked on the road to Emmaus as you broke open the scriptures to them help us to see what it means that the Son is the face of the Father and help us to to assimilate that and to let it grow and shape who we are as men who seek after your heart we ask this through Christ our Lord and the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit amen so I'd like to begin this morning hopefully you have the handout and our main text is going to be from John 14 during the last supper discourse and our Lord said to the 12 let not your hearts be troubled believe in God believe also in me in my father's house or many rooms if it were not so what I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you and when I go to prepare a place for you I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am you may be also and you know the way where I am going and Thomas said to him Lord we don't know where you're going how can we know the way she has said to him I am the way and the truth and the life no one comes to the Father but by me if you had known me you would have known my father also hence forth you know him and have seen him Philip said to him Lord show us the Father and we shall be satisfied Jesus said to him have I been with you so long and yet you do not know me Philip he who has seen me has seen the Father how can you say show us the Father it's from this text and other similar that we often speak of our Lord as being the face of the Father as he says he who has seen me has seen the Father and Pope Emeritus Benedict reflected on this passage on on the idea of Jesus as face of the Father in several of his audiences which you can find if you just Google Benedict the 16th face of the Father you find a two or three audiences in which he reflected on this profound theme this text has a lot of meaning to me because of my personal history with one of my best friends in the course of my life a very close friend from high school in fact in high school of course I was a Protestant my father was a Navy chaplain but one of my closest friends was Catholic and a devout Catholic Lector and stayed faithful to to the moral teaching of the church did not use bad language fasted during Lent the whole the whole Catholic lifestyle even in a very secular environment in Hawaii as we were growing up unfortunately after high school we went our separate ways and different things happened to me and different things happened to him about 15 years later I ended up coming into the Catholic Church while I was at the University of Notre Dame and one of the first things I wanted to do was get back in contact with my good friend from earlier in my life and give him the good news that I had seen the light and I come over and so I tracked him down and sent a message and oh my goodness when I got the reply it was very cool and I thought in a sense of you know at arms distance I thought oh something has happened and sure enough in those intervening 15 years I came into the church and he went out and we had various discussions and at one point we were exchanging letters back and forth and talking about the faith and he wrote to me and he said he quoted this verse I am the way the truth life no one comes to the father but by me and he said I reject the salvation offered by Jesus Christ because it is exclusive it excludes other people right it's too arrogant and of course that hit me pretty hard right it's one of two times in my life where I've witnessed a person a friend up close explicitly reject our Lord and it's a very disturbing experience but I'm grateful for this his response caused me to think about this text and to really ask the question is Jesus arrogant because he says I am the way to the father is Jesus arrogant because he says he has seen me has seen the father is that just a pride trip is that kind of a religious chauvinism that you and I you know go around and saying our our leader is better than your leader our leader knows the true way and you guys all have false ways you know that just a matter of our own hubris but after years of pondering this it began to come to me why it's not because let's look closely at what our Lord says he does not say I am the way to God in some general sense or he has seen me has seen God but I am the way to the father and there's a distinction because our Lord is the only founder of a world religion who teaches us that God is father now that strikes a lot of people are strange in America because we just assume that say Islam is some kind of modification like Christianity it's like basically like Christianity except they got five laws instead of the Ten Commandments and so on you know this is what my plumber told me when he was working on my house he graduated from another Catholic University which will remain nameless and so we're talking about religious like oh yeah you know 12 years of Catholic school I went to such and such university from a different religious order that shall remain nameless and he says oh yeah the Muslims are just like us you know we got the Ten Commandments they've got the five pillars of Islam blah blah blah right so we assume that all these other religions they're all teaching the way to the father no no so let's talk about the founders of other world religions Muhammad does not teach that God is a father in fact it's dogma in Islam that God is not a father and God has no children outright rejection of the revelation of the father Buddha to many American surprise was not even a theist he was an agnostic about the existence of God for him the existence of God was not the main matter of concern for the for the Buddha the matter of concern was to liberate your soul from the cycles of reincarnation and so he taught a path of virtue and temperance and mortification etc that would enable you to break the cycles of reincarnation but as to whether there was a God or not that was a matter that he never came down firmly on you know subsequently you know centuries and centuries later Buddha got virtually divinized by some of his followers but that's not what he taught and we could go on and on you know Confucius Confucius didn't really set up a religion and he too was an agnostic about God loud to founder of Taoism in China another big world religion at least in China God is just kind of a force like in Star Wars you know and you die and you get back absorbed back into the force and it's like that for many Eastern religions which some of which are kind of polytheistic on the front end and pantheistic on the back end so by the time you sort it all out God is just this force so it's surprising I was actually surprised went through checking out getting books and checking out the world our Lord is the one the only one the only founder of a faith who claims not just that God is like a father you get that in a few but that he is father so that's what our faith offers our faith offers to the world the way to God as father not the way to break the cycles of incarnation not the way to submit to Allah the master of the universe but the way to God as father that is the good news that's why it is good news to find that the basis of all reality is one who loved you so much that he sent his son for your salvation not somebody else not creating a demigod not sending an angel not showing you some path that did not involve sacrifice for himself but loved you so much he sent his son for your salvation that is the offer of Christianity so when you line up the world religions in the in the marketplace okay we're selling different fruit if you want the apples of Allah they're down there if you want the kumquats of Buddhism they're down there we're selling bananas booth in the whole marketplace selling bananas if you're the only one selling bananas it's not arrogant to say I'm the only banana vendor the way to bananas that's not arrogance it's just a statement of fact that religion offers you this that religion offers you that if that's what you're into go but if you want the way to the father that's what we're selling if you want the way to the father the only way to the father is through Jesus Christ can I get an amen thank you can I get another one more for the toilet Trinity thank you the only way to the father is through Jesus Christ not arrogance it's a statement of fact our Lord is the only one who teaches that God is a father some other religions might say that there's a father like God but not a God who sent his son as a sacrifice for our sins not a God who is simply like a father but is father a God who is the essence of fatherhood from which human fatherhood is just kind of like a rough approximation that is unique not Allah not Vishnu not Brahman none of those are the father and so this is how Jesus shows us the face of the father when we see Jesus for who he really is the son sent from the father who loves us then we begin to understand the heart of the father you know we look at the cross and it's very common to say we look at the cross and we see the love of Jesus on the cross we see the love of Jesus in the crucifix but you know what also in the cross and in the crucifix we see the love of the father and I wish that was stated more commonly I wish we taught that more the love of the father because you know what a lot of our kids in CCD and whatnot you know what they're thinking I think like Jesus loves us but the father was mad you know the father wanted to zap us you know what Jesus said no no no zap me the father zapped him and said what kind of notion of God is that what kind of understanding the nature that's not how it was okay we almost have we almost have a perverse notion of what divine fatherhood is it's it's only a psychopathic father okay that delights in harming his son for a true father no look for a true father okay a true father would rather suffer than watch his son undergo suffering and we've not let that percolate adequately in in our spiritual psyche two of my sons were born with double cleft upper palate condition that basically meant they came forth from the womb without a roof on on their mouth and then a kind of profound bisection of the upper jaw and for that condition you have to have surgery fairly quickly within six months to start doing repair on the lip and then after a year you do work on the palate and so I've been through this with two sons going in with a six month old son and you're gonna put them under for surgery and the problem is since they're six months you can't communicate to them what's going on you can't explain to them that this is for their ultimate good or that everything's gonna be okay so when you give the child over to the nurse and the child is looking at you what's going on you know you're waving bye bye to your baby and in goes your son into the OR right and then you wait and I was a little bit better prepared for this the second time but the first time when I was taken back post-operative and saw my son for the first time it white as a sheet with with the stitching and on the face and yeah the poor little baby boy there I started to get light in I started to go down and nurses run up grab my arm you help me down into a chair I would have much rather gone into the OR myself sign me up right now okay well mr. Berger will let you take the surgery and said yep I'll do that thank you no problem okay much rather than watch the son go through that now we don't want to be pat your passion is right we know it's a it's it's a formal heresy to say the father suffered on the cross but it's a divine mystery something that John Paul II explored what is this mystery of the suffering the father because there's language that suggests grief in the heart of the father and in the Bible and so this is a great mystery to us but in the gift of Christ on the cross behind that scene we have insight into the heart of the father who was willing to make a greater sacrifice than self sacrifice the sacrifice to see his only beloved son be rejected suffer curse suffer re suffer punishment on behalf of the sins of his adopted children that fathers and brothers is a profound mystery when we gaze on the cross we see the heart of the love of the father in a way that cannot be comprehended also in the face of Christ on the cross we come to a knowledge of who God is without the coming of Christ we wouldn't we would know a lot of what God is okay but we would not know who God is looking on our sheets here St. Paul tells us what can be known about God through natural reason without revelation right Romans 120 famous verse ever since the creation the world his invisible nature namely his eternal power in deity has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made so they are without excuse and St. Paul goes on to enumerate the sins of humanity so St. Paul insists by natural reason by looking at the sky and the universe we could come to a knowledge of what God is you know eternally powerful omniscient omnipresent but that's a description okay that's not a face that's a description like the police out in Steubenville looking for me right looking for a suspect Caucasian 170 pounds blonde blue that might be enough for them to find me in about 15 other guys but that's a far cry from a face right so looking upon creation looking at natural reason it gives us you know a dispatcher description of what divinity we're looking for looking for a suspect omniscient omnipresent omnipotent but it doesn't give us a face does it and we want more than just a description we want a face see it there's one good thing about the German language which I had to study in college German language makes a distinction between ways of knowing so if you know a subject matter that's Wissen Wissen schaft that's science Wissen schaft that's scientific so all my Bible scholarship from the Germans was Wissen schaft can have it anyway that's visit if you know a person that's Kennan so you'd never say I ich weiß a Joe no you'd say ich weiß a theology you know I know theology but if you know Joe then I can a Joe okay this is personal knowledge right and from nature we can get Wissen about God but Kennan about God personal knowledge that comes through Jesus Christ and in the scriptures Jesus Christ is the one who gives us the face of God that goes with the name of God and you know to really know someone you need to know both their name and their face don't you you know this is the real this is the real problem for me the first five years of teaching here for like a 04 to 09 I can remember all of my students you know they come in and there is like they're all engraved on my heart the sixth year in the fall I walked into class I looked at 60 new freshmen and PBS one survey of Old Testament and I could almost physically feel a little spring go in my brain I in the brain who like files things said I quit I can do this anymore you're on your own now and I just have not been able to keep up since I can't keep faces straight I see students that look like former students Sarah no Christie no and stuff like that so I can't I have such trouble keeping the and I'm sure you experience this I'm sure you try to learn all your parishioners names and and periodically hi father you know I remember you when you confirmed me or baptized yeah you wouldn't remember when you baptized I don't remember something about you like oh who is this and you're real kind and they walk away and as you walk it back to your car like oh that's so we all experience that you need to know the name and the face well when you go into the Old Testament very interesting you find out that in the Old Testament God revealed his name you're Moses XS 314 God said to Moses we know this this is the passage of the burning brush and Moses saying what name shall I give to tell them about the God who sent me God says Moses said tell them I am who am and he said say this to the people of Israel I am has sent me to you and so what's revealed to us here is the name of God and I think it's appropriate you know this this is very much like in the Greek tradition the one necessary being the one whose essence is his existence the one who necessarily exists who lives in the eternal now neither future nor past who was and is and is to come as St. John writes in Revelation expanding on the idea of I am who am so this is the name of God but the face of God is not revealed in the Old Testament Moses wanted to see the face in Exodus 33 verse 18 after making intercession after making a kind of Christ like intercession in fact to the to the father for the people of Israel in which Moses even goes to the point of offering his life on behalf of Israel but the Lord declines and then Moses says to the Lord I pray these show me thy glory and he said I will make all my goodness past before you and will proclaim before you my name the Lord and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy but he said you cannot see my face for man shall not see me and live and the Lord said behold there's a place by me where you shall stand upon the rock and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back but my face shall not be seen and that's the closest anyone in the Old Testament comes to seeing God oh yeah you know you'll read in the book of Judges or in some of the prophets where you know somebody will see the angel of Lord and they will say I have seen God or they'll see God in a vision but we have to read the Old Testament according to the tradition which comes down to us from from Judaism before us and in the tradition of church and standing on Exodus 33 the Jewish tradition unanimously held these other purported sightings of God that we have in various places the Old Testament these were visionary these were mediated okay in various ways through an angel through a mental vision but Moses came the closest and he only saw God's back which we don't know what that means but it means in some way saw God's presence without seeing it directly and that's as close as anyone gets see communion with God in the garden out of an eve walked with the father in the cool of the day and presumably could gaze on his face but through our sin in the garden thereafter in the Old Testament the face was withdrawn and so we could say the drama of most of scripture is the journey of man back to see the face of God and David one of the great saints of scripture he articulates this desire to see God's face the direct view of God is song 27 8 thou has said seek my face my heart says to the thy face Lord do I seek and again Psalm 42 I'm missing verse 2 on the handout but you're familiar with it as a heart longs for flowing streams so longs my soul for thee oh God my soul thirsts for God for the living God when shall I come and behold the face of God so David on behalf of all the saints of the Old Testament expresses this desire to see God's face and yet the face of God remained hidden in these times hidden as we see in the tabernacle because in the tabernacle proper which was a tent divided into two sections there was a curtain that divided the holy place from the Holy of Holies and the direct presence of God remained enthroned above the wings of the cherubim above the Ark in the Holy of Holies and there was no source of light it was utter darkness behind the curtain in front of the curtain in the holy place there was light with the lamp stand and on the other side the showbread the twelve loaves of bread laid out on a golden table and in the holy place there was light and there was an altar of incense which represented the prayers of the people and the priests could enter there and make intercession and burn incense upon the altar but there was no light when you went behind the curtain and so even though the divine presence was there nothing could be seen and that was symbolic of the reservation of the full revelation of God in the Old Testament now as far as entrance into the Holy Holies went only once a year did the high priest go back into the Holy of Holies and that was on the holiest day of the liturgical calendar the day of atonement Yom Kippur and on that day the high priest would go back in behind the curtain into the utter darkness and their sprinkle blood upon the mercy seat for his own sins for the sins of the priestly house his brother priests and for the sins of the whole people and then when he would exit the Holy of Holies and the holy holy place he would walk out in later times this was within the temple walk out into the temple courts and there from a raised platform he would pronounce the priestly blessing for number six which are so familiar this is our Old Testament reading on January 1st so many times we've heard this proclaimed in the liturgy but this is the priestly blessing the Lord said to Moses say to Aaron and his sons that show you bless the people of Israel you shall say to them the Lord bless you and keep you the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace thus they shall place my name upon the people and I will bless them the Lord says so the name is proclaimed because the name had been revealed in the Old Testament and the name was placed on the people in fact by the time of our Lord this ceremony on the day of Atonement was the only time of the year when anyone in Israel would phonetically pronounce the name of the Lord and every time that they heard the name of the Lord pronounced they had prostrate so here pronouncing the thousands gathered in temple courts drop from which we get the practice of reverencing the bow of the head etc at the holy name of our Lord but any event by time our Lord this is the only time when the name was pronounced but look in addition to place it to the mention of the name there is also the mention of the face twice in verse 25 the Lord make his face shine upon you and in verse 26 lift up his countenance upon you now I don't know why they translated differently in English but in the Hebrew in both cases it's the face the Lord lift up his face upon you is literally what verse 26 says but here in these verses is expressed as a wish may the Lord do this for you but the face is not revealed in the old covenant it is the coming of Christ then that is the answer to this prayer for blessing uttered by the high priest on the day of Atonement every year and we can see such a profound prophetic aspect to that after having made Atonement with the blood of bowls and goats which cannot wash away sin the high priest would exit and bless the people with essentially a prayer that at some point God would make his face to shine upon them and that happens when the one who can make Atonement comes and shows his face and St. John is so excited about it that he writes about it at the beginning of his gospel no one has ever seen God everybody knows what that is that's a put down on Moses Moses you're pretty good man but sorry never saw him saw the Promised Land never saw God no has ever seen God but the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father he has made him known this is great stuff and that's why when you read through the introduction to the Gospel of John there's all this seeing that goes on as the first disciples are being called they ask him Rabbi where do you stay in verse 39 he says them come in see they came and saw where he was staying they stay with him that day for was about the 10th hour Nathaniel said to him later in that same chapter can anything good come out of Nazareth Nazareth Phillips says to him come and see Nathaniel comes Gia speaks to him here is an Israelite in whom is no guile etc and he says you are the king of Israel and Gia answered him because I said to you I saw you under the fig tree do you believe you shall see greater things than these truly truly I say to you you will see heaven opened so in the Gospel of John the Apostle at the end of his life is still so excited about the coming of Jesus in which we can see the face of God and our desires from old from the old covenant can finally be satisfied that he writes in all this seeing all through his gospel culminating of course in the climax of the passage we read at the beginning Gia said to him have I been with you so long and yet you do not know me Philip Philip might probably felt pretty bad at this point I'll sit around the last supper and nobody really wants to ask any questions but you know Philip screws up the courage he's gonna ask I don't really know where you're going don't you know me Philip I've been taking classes for three years and apparently haven't gotten the basics down James is snickering over there I know better Philip I don't ask questions anyway for Philip but I'm glad he asked the question because he gives the Lord opportunity to teach us do you said how I've been with you so long and yet you do not know me Philip he who has seen me has seen the father how can you say show us the father so at last the cry of David the cry of Moses is answered in the face of Christ now what is this what does this mean is this mean that just looking at Jesus you had instantaneous knowledge of the mystery God obviously not because our Lord in his physical body walked all around Israel many people looked at him and completely did not get the message so even when our Lord is speaking at the last supper he has seen me has seen the father to truly see the father required something more amen something more than simply physical sight even there required faith you know sometimes people and I have students like this they think oh if I could have just been back in the times when our Lord was walking around Israel you know then it would have been easy to believe not necessarily he didn't look like God he had no form or comeliness that we should be drawn to him right there were challenges to faith when the Lord was walking among us how can that man who can be scarred who can be wounded and couldn't experience hunger etc and says challenging things that we don't always understand how can he be God that's pretty tough to believe actually in millennia of hindsight and reflection there's in some ways we have greater clarity and there's there's some motives for easier belief now we've had a chance to ponder but it's always been an act of faith and to see the father in the face of Jesus has always required something more than physical sight but our Lord proclaimed the last supper he who sees me has seen the father but what does that what does that do for us now okay because he's ascended like oh that was nice the cry of the man of the Old Testament was answered for 33 years and now we're back to square one right so how do we see the face of the father now well you know it's interesting the way that we see the face of the father through the face of Christ was actually prefigured already in the Old Testament because as I said the divine presence remained in the obscurity the darkness of the holy of holies but in the holy place there was light that light was provided by the lampstand the the seven flames of the menorah and of course we know that in the New Testament the flaming fire of the menorah becomes a symbol of holy spirit and that Pentecost from the tongues of flame come down I mean this is my speculation okay I think God was making a menorah out of the apostles 12 candlesticks okay or the Holy Spirit illuminating the divine presence but in the light of the Holy Spirit which operates with our faith what were you able to see in the holy place able to see the bread of the presence in my old King James and I was growing up that's all we use when I was growing up was good enough for St. Paul it's good enough for us King James old school Protestant tradition we use King James they call it the show the shoe bread okay but in Hebrew it's the lechem hapanim okay let me write that down you can go back and use this your money's worth out of the conference lechem hapanim bread of the face the bread of the presence was the bread of God's face what bread in which we can see the face of God why 12 loaves of it it's the mystical body of Israel as people and in the light of the flame of the Holy Spirit you were able to see the bread of the presence of God oh that's interesting I wonder where this is going let me point something out interesting in John 14 on the front of front of our outline in verse 8 Philip says to him Lord show us the father and we shall be satiated there's only one other place in the Gospel of John where this particular Greek word for satisfaction is used I guess John 6 I heard it yes that's right the feeding of the 5,000 and what is the context by the way for this discourse where Jesus is talking about seeing his face instituting the Eucharist all right and so it's in Christ who leaves his presence with us in the Holy Eucharist that we continue to see his face and through him the face of the father and not only John points that out but as we all know that famous passage in Luke 24 walking on the road to Emmaus he comes along beside them and they're still in the old covenant he hides his face from them right they don't recognize him so the the old covenant status has not yet been released for them so they walk along and he breaks open the Scriptures to them as they walk you know as a prototype of the mass the liturgy of the word proceeding the liturgy of the Eucharist which is coming and he breaks open the Scriptures and as we find out later their hearts burned within them right charismatic heartburn hearts burn within him as he's breaking open the word because as he's breaking up on the word he's helping them to make the transition from the old to the new and then evening comes and he makes like he's going on they say no stay with us the day is long progressed bring him into the home they sit down at the meal he takes bread he breaks he blesses using words from the institution narrative and as we read here in Luke 24 30 when he was at table with them he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them and their eyes were opened and they recognized him the bread of the face and then he vanished out of their sight why does the operation cease why does it what does he vanish from their sight when the bread is broken of course because the bread of the face has now been given to him his presence will remain with them forever in the holy Eucharist and so it is for us at every celebration of mass it always strikes me what are we commanded to do at the high point of mass what are we commanded to do behold gaze always strikes me this is the answer to the cry of the human heart behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and behind the Lamb of God we see the heart in the face of the father who loved us so much to give up that lamb son which struck him to his very heart that is the beauty that is the beauty of the mass why does Jesus leave his presence to us as bread I think there's there could be great fruit for meditation on this why is bread the face of God in the new covenant again we know it's not just physical sight many look at the physical Eucharist and are not converted and are not persuaded I think they sit long enough to get a sunburn and come around but but many see the Eucharist it's so it took and it takes eyes of faith but let's remember it always has taken eyes of faith even when our Lord was president is in his physical body during the 33 years always taken faith but what does it mean that God leaves his face to us in bread so let's think about the nature of bread what is bread well it's people food animals don't eat bread they don't make bread so bread is a very particular kind of substance it's a substance made for human nourishment and there's profound meditation in that we do not live by bread alone but every word that comes forth from the mouth of God it's God who gives himself to us as nourishment bread is the most fundamental food in most cultures so God gives himself to us as our fundamental source of life bread doesn't kill you you can't be stabbed by bread okay be pretty hard to kill anybody by beating them over the head with bread you know the only way you can die of bread by refusing to eat it so that tells us something about the nature of God okay where does death come from death comes from turning away from him turning away from the free offer the free offer of life and you know as I was meditating on bread in preparation to talk it occurred to me you know bread is very approachable bread is very non-threatening they never make horror movies about bread you're watching and the heroin here's a thump in the closet she gets up of course she's gonna investigate right starts walking across the room reach you for the knob of the closet it's a lot for we bread never have movies like that they make movies about killer tomatoes personally if I find broccoli intimidating but that's not even going to zucchini but but bread it is so approachable the welcoming heart of the father okay the father from whom no sin can exclude us sin is self-exclusion sin is refusal to come and to be nourished but the father loves us so much the father has provided everything for our nourishment there's a humility about bread as well you know it's not a wedding cake it's not filet mignon it's not great poop on it's not yeah crème brûlée so there's a humility which speaks to us about the humility of Christ which reveals to us something profound again about the nature of God the heart of the father so we can make our own meditation this is something that we can do in prayer and think why is it in the providence of God that he reveals himself through the face of bread but but fathers and brothers this this day let us understand that there is only one way to the father and that's no arrogant statement because nobody else even claims it it's not even being sold by any other booth the one way to the father is through Christ he showed us the face not only the name but the face the character the love the virtues the nature so we don't just have a description but we understand the person we don't just listen but we can who God is we enter into communion with him and he has not left us without his face but in the mass that we will celebrate in a few moments at this conference we are gonna be commanded yet once again to behold the face of God in his sacramental presence may God grant us the grace to see the face of the father through Christ's Eucharistic presence which will remain till we see him face to face in glory amen in the name of the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit amen