Whence Enough?
[“Philip said to Jesus, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us’” (Jn 14:8).]
[“Solo Dios basta” (Terésa de Jesús).]
O Lover,
The thrust of the above text has over recent years been migrating toward the center of my life of faith. Brother of skeptical Nathaniel and cited most significantly in the Fourth gospel, Philip the disciple broaches a request and offers a response which have skewered me, seemingly for the duration.
First, the petition: “Lord, show us the Father.” Although our text is found in a particularly formative Christian writing, its thrust is universal spilling out over boundaries of faith tradition, language family, metaphysical system, and hemispheric demarcation. The request is the appeal, ever contextualized and bearing many names, of the human heart to be shown the biggest possible picture, indeed, Ultimate Reality. Jesus’s parable of the sower (Mt 13:1-23) and Paul’s missive to the Romans (1:19-20) are but two attestations of the wideness of Your Self-disclosure and mercy. No spirituality, however fervent, however named, can ignore the impact of the scale of this petition.
For me, O Lover, this request has become the última, the finále, the one arcing both this life and the greater, the one beyond which there is no other. In a world of sensorial and intellectual overload, of perpetual crisis, forever war, and obscenely maldistributed resources, I “set my face like flint” (Is 50:7) on being shown what in its depth is unconditionally good, trustworthy and enduring. Philip’s appeal has become my own, the cry of my heart.
And then, second, there is the assessment: “and that will be enough for us” (EA). It is a massive, indeed startling, word. Our entire lives can be understood in terms of desire. Whether regarding food, achievement, recognition, relationships, sex, or longevity, we innately strain to arrive at “enough.” And yet, in and of itself nothing finite, its essential goodness notwithstanding, is able to deliver us to that destination. You have not “boiled over” (ebullítio [Eckhart]) us into being only to satiate us cheaply: this or that, he or she, whatever, none is ever enough. The Christian mystics in particular witness to this futility: e.g., Augustine (“You have made us for [Y]ourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in [Y]ou”), Terésa de Jesús (“God alone suffices”), Murray Rogers (“God is enough”).
The plot of Philip’s assessment both thickens and deepens when viewed in the light of the teaching of Gregory of Nyssa (c.335-394) that our desire for You can never be fully satiated, whether in this or the greater life. The beatífica for Gregory centers on our eternal exploration of You who are not subject to depletion. This would seem to mean that You, oxymoronically, are drawing us into a contentment in regard to Your inexhaustibility! This would then be yet another of Your delicious paradoxes, one which the Easter Exsúltet refers to as the eternal wedding of earth and heaven. That tension rests well with me, O Lover, for rather than either inscrutable or decipherable, Your Self-disclosure, for me principally midwifed via the Christ, is “sufficient,” “enough,” enormously hopeful and yet appropriately modest words. Enough is enough.
And so, O Lover, I join Philip in avowing that only You—however inexhaustible— are enough!
