This Wednesday of the sixth week of Easter brings us to the great hinge of Christian witness: how to speak of God to those who do not yet know him. Paul finds an altar in Athens; Jesus promises a Spirit who teaches at the rhythm of the heart; Mary, in Fatima, gives three children only what they can carry.
"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth… he will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you." (Jn 16:12-15)
There is a sentence here we usually skim past, but it is one of the gentlest things Jesus ever said: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now." He has more to give. He stops because we cannot yet receive. Truth, in the school of Christ, is never imposed — it is offered at the pace of the heart that is becoming able to hold it.
This is why Paul, in Athens, does not begin by attacking idolatry. He sees what no one else has noticed: the hunger underneath the statues. The altar inscribed To an unknown god is, for him, the most truthful object in the city — the place where Athens accidentally tells the truth about itself. He does not mock that altar; he reads it. And he says the sentence that belongs to every Christian witness: "What you worship without knowing, that is what I now proclaim to you."
There is no contempt for Athens here. The task of witness is not to bring God to a place where he is absent — he is never absent — but to name gently the longing already at work. Paul does not flatten the Athenian culture; he completes it.
Yet most of Athens does not believe. The crowd mocks at the mention of resurrection; Paul leaves with a small handful — Dionysius, Damaris, a few others. The Spirit's pedagogy is gentle, but not therefore guaranteed of mass success. The mustard seed is sown.
The Church places before us today the memorial of Our Lady of Fatima. It is no accident she stands here. The Spirit's pedagogy reaches its purest form in his Mother — who, in Portugal, did not deliver the entire counsel of God to those three children at once. She gave them what they could carry. She is the perfect catechist of a Spirit who never breaks the bruised reed.
The Child of Bethlehem teaches us this rhythm. He could have come in the storm; he chose silence. The Missionaries of Bethlehem learn the same patience: to find the altar — the inscription, the half-articulated longing — and to begin there, gently, with whatever the Spirit has already prepared.
Prayer of the Day
Father, in you we live and move and have our being. Send us your Spirit of truth so that we may recognise the altars to the unknown god in our own world, and find words to name what hides there. Teach us your pedagogy: gentle, patient, never crushing the heart that is slowly opening. Through Mary, lead us into all the truth at the pace your love has chosen. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
For Meditation
- What "altars to the unknown god" can we recognise in our own time and place?
- Where is the Lord asking us to slow down a truth so the heart of someone we love can carry it?
