COME AND SEE

COME AND SEE

Fr Luke A Veronis

Come and See!

What do we come to see when we come to the Church every week? What are we looking for? Are we looking for anything special? Are we expecting to discover someone special?

Come and See!

This is an invitation, yet an invitation which demands a response. It’s not a passive request. We’re not invited to simply come and observe. We can’t come while being content with our life as it is. We’re invited to come and make a decision. We’re invited to come and take some action. We’re invited to come and seek, come and search, come and discover something new and amazing that will change our lives and change the world around us.

Come and See!

See what Nathanael discovered: “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Do we see and accept Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the King, not only of Israel but the King of our lives? To see Him as truly the Lord and Master of our lives?

Come and See!

Do we see and understand Jesus as “the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” The One who takes away our sins and shortcomings, the failures and mistakes in our lives and who offers us a new beginning, a new start to discover the abundant life He means for us to have?

Come and See isn’t simply an invitation to passively observe and intellectually accept some new reality – that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah who has broken into history and changed the world. It is more than this. Philip and Nathanael, Andrew and Peter were invited to come and see, but then to come and begin a new journey of faith, to come and enter into a new relationship with God, to come and discover a new way of life, to come and start a new journey of never-ending change and transformation.

Come and see is an invitation, as Alexander Schmemann puts it, “for the transformation, the deification, and the transfiguration of human life.” So, this is quite the life-shattering, life-defining, life-altering invitation. It’s not a simple invitation that we can push to the side and ignore. We need to make a decision which will have serious consequences in our lives.

Yet, will we come and see and then follow where this invitation leads?

We read this Gospel story today, specifically on the first Sunday of our Great Lenten journey because Great Lent is supposed to be a season of discovery and renewal, of change and transformation. Our increased prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, along with the additional weekly services, are supposed to open up our hearts in new ways so that we can encounter the living Christ, so that we will come and allow the Lord to transform and transfigure our lives more and more into His likeness. We are on a journey of becoming like Him!

Are we approaching our Lenten disciplines with this goal and purpose in mind?

We read this Gospel story not only on the first Sunday of Lent, but also on the day we call the Sunday of Orthodoxy. This is the day we highlight the Triumph of Orthodoxy back in the 9^th century – the Triumph of proper worship and faith, the Triumph of proper understanding of icons, the Triumph of Truth in who Jesus Christ is and what He did by becoming one of us, a human icon.

In honoring icons, however, we aren’t only honoring the restoration of physical icons in the worship of our churches, but more importantly, we honor the human icon, every human being who is created in the image and likeness of our Creator. We are the greatest icon of the church and the veneration that we show to the beautiful physical icons in our churches and homes should only remind us of the beautiful icon we see in ourselves, as God’s children created in His image and likeness, and in our neighbors, the people we encounter every day in our lives.

Come and see is an invitation to embrace a worldview where we see icons in the face of every person we meet each day and we are asked to venerate and respect them, just as we kiss and reverence the sacred icons in the church. Our journey of transformation, deification, and transfiguration in our own lives needs to be properly understood as a journey together with our neighbors as well. All of humanity is invited to join this joyful and exciting journey of change. All of humanity has this potential which we must see and acknowledge in others.

This then implies to come and see means we can’t minimize the potential for sanctity that each person has. We must respect the human icon in every person.

Come and See!

Will we all accept this invitation? Will we all embrace the exciting journey which this invitation opens up to all of us? A journey for the transformation, the deification, and the transfiguration of all of human life.

COME AND SEE!