How can we understand the profound statement: ‘No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me.’ What could this mean? Part of the answer, perhaps, is that we are drawn to Christ by the beauty of God: God’s beauty, most fully revealed in Jesus, captures our hearts and awakens longing. To have seen Christ is to have seen the Father. And this beauty strikes us as revelation. It does not fit into some pre-existing problem, philosophy or set of circumstances by which Christ is defined.

Jesus himself is the ultimate criterion of truth. As there are no higher truths to which we can appeal to authenticate this truth, this revelation must be self-authenticating. Jesus is not a stepping stone to something greater; He is not a means to an end separate from Himself. In Jesus, the ends and the means, the Alpha and the Omega, come together.

It is He Himself, the Bread of Life, who sustains us on our journey to Him. We do not, and cannot, come to Jesus apart from Him. We grow towards what we love, and Love is what sustains us in that growth. His flesh, His being lifted up on the cross where His sacrificial love shines most brightly, is the beauty that draws us to Him ‘when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself’ (John 12:32) and at the same time the very means of the world’s redemption, given ‘for the life of the world.’ (John 6:51)

Our response, called forth by God, is gratitude and eucharistia (thanksgiving).

by Paul Asnicar