Behold the Lamb of God- Come and See

Jn 1:35-42

This Sunday’s Gospel brings us to the heart of any Youth 2000 prayer meeting. Like the disciples we too are searching for meaning in our lives, for truth, for love and understanding. Someone has told us to go to Jesus since he is the source and fulfilment of all we are seeking. The first person that encouraged us to go to a Youth 2000 retreat or prayer-meeting is just like John the Baptist in the Gospel of this Sunday.  Like the Baptist they said to us go to Jesus.

At all of our Youth 2000 prayer meetings we spend time with Jesus. We ask, like the disciples “Master where do you live”.  He lives in His Church and most especially in his true presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Here is where we always find the Lord. He invites us to “Come and See”. We come to Him by sitting with him in silence; our hearts open to his presence. Then in his presence we pray the Most Holy Rosary, the mysteries of Christ’s life. We look at Jesus’ life, we see him at various moments during his life. As we pray the various mysteries of the Rosary we are looking at Jesus and discovering new things about him.

After spending time with him we learn to follow him each in our own way. Each of us have our own personal way of following Christ and we discover it by spending time with him and looking at his life. The more we look at the life of Jesus we discover the more we know of our own lives. It is Christ who opens to us the treasures of our lives when we open the treasures of his life. “In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear” (Vatican II).

This Sunday’s Gospel invites us to renew our commitment to our Youth 2000 meetings, for it is only in the presence of the Lord, by going to him and spending time seeing him in the mysteries of his life that we truly discover who we are ourselves. Only there is the source of true peace and happiness.

Fr. John Harris OP