The Gaze Born of the Father: Seeing Jesus and Receiving the Holy Spirit

In his commentary on this Sunday’s Gospel, Friar Luciano Audisio, OAR, invites us to discover that faith does not consist solely in knowing Jesus, but in learning to see with the eyes of the Father. Based on Christ’s words about the knowledge between the Father and the Son, this reflection shows how the Holy Spirit transforms our way of contemplating God, others, and the world, inaugurating the experience of a new creation even now.

Contemplating Christ with the Father’s Gaze

This Sunday’s Gospel introduces us to a mystery that transcends all human measure: the knowledge between the Father and the Son, and the participation granted to us in that knowledge. Jesus says that no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son. At first glance, this might seem like an exclusionary statement, as if we are left outside that intimate circle. However, the Gospel does not close, but opens. It does not leave us out, but invites us to enter into the deepest part of God’s life.

Here appears a first surprise: the knowledge Jesus speaks of is not a simple intellectual understanding. The verb used in the Gospel, “to know fully” (ἐπιγινώσκω), does not refer to accumulating information about someone, but to a living, intimate, total relationship. Only the Father knows the Son in this way, and only the Son knows the Father in this way, because their relationship is not external, but the very life of God, the eternal communion of love.

And yet, at that very moment, the Gospel tells us something decisive: the Son has come to reveal the Father to us. That is, what was proper to divine intimacy has been made accessible, made visible. The Incarnation is precisely this: that which could only be contemplated in God has now entered our history, walked our streets, and spoken our language.

Therefore, when we look at Jesus, we are not simply looking at a figure from the past or a religious teacher. We are being introduced into the very gaze of God. It is as if the Father, in His love, grants us to see the Son with His own eyes. We do not know Him fully as the Father knows Him, but we are introduced, by grace, into that contemplation.

The Church Fathers expressed this with very powerful images. They said that contemplating Christ is like sitting on the Father’s lap, learning to look at the Son from His tenderness. It is a way of saying that faith is not just adherence to certain truths, but participation in a living relationship. And in that relationship, we are educated in a new way of seeing.

Saint Basil, with a poetic image, spoke of receiving “dove’s eyes”: a simple, pure gaze, transformed by the Holy Spirit. That is, not only what we see changes, but how we see. The Holy Spirit does not add information, but transforms the very organ of inner vision.

The Holy Spirit Transforms Our Way of Seeing

Here is the heart of the Gospel: the Holy Spirit is the one who introduces us into the Father’s gaze upon the Son. And, in doing so, He transforms our way of being in the world. We no longer look from judgment, suspicion, or indifference, but from a gaze that participates in divine love.

And this transformation does not remain internal. The early Christians understood that the entire creation is the fruit of the love of the Father and the Son, that is, of the Holy Spirit. Everything that exists is like the visible fruit of that eternal communion. Therefore, when our gaze is healed by the Spirit, we begin to see the world differently: not as a set of neutral or hostile things, but as a reality inhabited, permeated by the presence of God.

In this sense, to see with the eyes of the Spirit is to participate in a new creation. It is as if the world is reborn before our eyes. Reality does not change in itself, but the way we inhabit it does. And that transformation begins with the gaze.

That is also why our gazes leave a mark. A gaze can wound, can close off, can darken someone’s life. But it can also open, can heal, can restore dignity. There are faces that harden due to the gazes they have received, and there are faces that light up from having been recognized in love.

A New Gaze for a New Creation

When we contemplate Christ, the Holy Spirit teaches us to see as He sees. And then something decisive happens: each person begins to be seen not as a problem, nor as a threat, nor as an object, but as a mystery loved by God. The gaze ceases to be possession and becomes a blessing.

This is how the audacity of today’s Gospel is understood. To know Jesus is not just to know things about Him. It is to let His own life, His relationship with the Father, and His love enter into us. It is to allow the Holy Spirit to give us “new eyes,” a transformed gaze, a gaze born from the very heart of God.

And when that happens, we don’t just see Jesus differently. We begin to see everything differently. Because whoever has been introduced into the Father’s gaze upon the Son already begins to live, in the midst of this world, the first glimmerings of the new creation.