He who seeks, finds. Our Lady and St. Joseph searched for Jesus for three days and found him. Zacchaeus, who also desired to see him, provided the means, and the Master went ahead of him, inviting him to his house. The multitudes who went out in search of Him then had the joy of being with Him. No one who has truly sought Christ has been disappointed. Herod, as will be seen later in the Passion, only tried to see the Lord out of curiosity, on a whim..., and so He is not found. When Pilate referred him to him, when he saw Jesus, he was overjoyed, for he had wanted to see Him for a long time, because he had heard many things about Him and hoped to see Him perform some miracle. He asked Him in many words, but He answered him nothing17. Jesus said nothing to her, because Love has nothing to say in the face of frivolity. He comes to meet us so that we may give ourselves, so that we may correspond to his infinite Love.
We see Jesus, present in the Tabernacle and so close to our lives, when we desire to purify our souls in the Sacrament of Confession, when we do not allow passing goods - even licit ones - to fill our hearts as if they were definitive, for - as St. Augustine teaches - "the love of shadows makes the eyes of the soul weaker and incapable of seeing the face of God. For this reason, the more man indulges his weakness, the more he enters into darkness".
Vultum tuum, Domine, requiram..., I will seek your face, O Lord.... The contemplation of the Most Holy Humanity of the Lord is an inexhaustible source of love and strength in the midst of the difficulties of life. Many times we will approach the scenes of the Gospel; we will slowly consider that the same Jesus of Bethany, of Capernaum, the one who welcomes everyone... is the one we have, perhaps a few meters away, in the Tabernacle. At other times we will use the images that represent him as a living reminder of his presence, as the saints did. Entering the oratory one day," writes Saint Teresa of Jesus, "I saw an image that had been brought there to be kept (...). It was of Christ very wounded and so devout that, looking at it, I was completely disturbed to see him as such, because it represented well what happened for us. I felt so much how badly I had been thankful for those wounds, that my heart seemed to break and I threw myself on Him with a great outpouring of tears, begging Him to strengthen me at once so as not to offend Him". This love, which in some way needs to be nourished by the senses, is strength for life and an enormous good for the soul. What could be more natural than to seek in a portrait, in an image, the face of the one we love so much! The saint herself exclaimed: "Woe to those who through their own fault lose this good! It seems that they do not love the Lord, because if they loved him, they would be happy to see his portrait, as here it is even happy to see the portrait of the one who is loved well".