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1:44-45. Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
The first recruiting of the Disciples was easy, for it took place among blood brothers. Now for the first time an outsider enters the circle. The first confrontation takes place, the first dialogue about the truth of Christianity. Philip does not try to convince in any other way than by witnessing: “We have found.” He says not we have met but we have found. In this lies for him the strength of the proof. They have found, so they have sought; an openness was in them to accept someone. They were like people knowing that somewhere a task is awaiting them but not knowing of what it consists. At present they can do no more than to be ready for this task, remain in a state that they recognize to be one of seeking without being able to say what it is they are seeking. They know only that they are on a way but that the goal toward which they are walking does not depend on them. They have to be ready for one whom they do not know, about whom they know only that they must be at his disposal. They even have no idea whether they will suit him or not, whether he will seek them or not. All they know is that the whole decision rests with him and in no way with themselves; their only task is to seek him and place themselves at the disposal of him the unknown. In addition, they know that their openness is the response to a demand already made, that it is the entire and sufficient response. It is this response that matters, and in this point they must not fail. If they fulfill this one thing, openness in order to be able to find, or rather allow themselves to be found, then they have fully done their task. A final point has been put behind their past life. What will happen after this finding and being found will be of a different nature. In this new life they will forever lag behind their task, for everything will now become infinite and beyond their capacity to understand; every calculation and comprehension will cease. But first there is this finishing point, which will also be a starting point. At this point demand and fulfilment are one. It is the turning point when the Law is fulfilled and the Old Covenant passes over into the New Covenant; a visible and firmly marked point before the eternal movement in the new life of love begins. For one moment there is perfection: what is meant to be, exists. Then everything begins to move again, and love will become so quick and will grow to such a degree that man will never be able to come equal with it. The task that the Lord is going to set will always be one that could have been fulfilled more perfectly, because love has no limits in the vertical direction. Now, however, they have found. In this indivisible meeting point between Old and New Covenant, between Law and love, they have found the Lord as the one whom they expected together with the Law and the prophets: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. In this encounter they have found their Master, the one who will always remain their Master because to have found him means to go on finding him ever anew and be allowed to seek him ever anew for all eternity.
von Speyr, Adrienne (1994) John Vol 1 pp 156-157 Ignatius Press
Each person brings himself along when he comes to pray; and if he is inexperienced in prayer, what he brings with him will mostly bear the stamp of his personal problems and daily life. Then he will learn that, in prayer, even if he asks for something or for clarity in a matter that is important to him personally, a reorganization always takes place. What he regarded as essential may become quite unimportant from God’s point of view. What seemed easy he may now find difficult. He cannot calculate how this change is going to take place, so he must be ready to fit his arrangements in with God’s. In prayer he will learn what shape God now wishes to give to his nature, his abilities and his current situation, in the context of grace and supernature. Even if this nature is already Christian, if prayer is properly cultivated it will continually be exposed to the reshaping power of grace and will be subordinated to God’s nature—which, for us, is always supernatural—as its rule of life. The supernatural possesses the orientation, the importance and the countenance of God and his truth. So in prayer it is crucial that nature should be in a state of indifference regarding grace in order to be open and accessible to God’s nature. The person who perseveres in the attitude of prayer will experience the effect of grace on nature as the real constant in his life. He will enter each succeeding prayer with an ever-growing renunciation of what he thinks of as his own and of all he has preconceived, planned and explained, letting himself be led by grace more and more. In his own affairs he will experience the blowing of the Spirit. He will come to see that he has been handed over as a victim and that in his sacrifice and his desolation (which may be subject to very natural causes) he has been permitted to know the consolation of the experience of God. He will realize that consolation does not consist in seeing his earthly life pursuing its course according to his will and expectation, but in God adopting him into his providence and fashioning his destiny. On earth he may have to drag the same problems around with him to the very end; yet, from a Christian point of view, he may continually enjoy God’s consolation, which is to experience his truth. Prayer becomes renewal, and renewal becomes truth, and truth becomes the presence of God. As time goes by he will learn so to long for this presence that he will mention his own natural affairs less and less, until he almost forgets them when he comes before God, letting God alone speak. No longer will he try to force God in some direction of his own: He will leave the whole area open for the divine direction, for the Spirit.
von Speyr, Adrienne (1985). The World of Prayer pp 296-297. Ignatius Press.
