We live in an age when nostalgia sells. We have radio stations devoted to “oldies,” that is, the music of some former era. Television has endless recall of shows from Jack Benny to Leave it to Beaver to I Love Lucy to ... you name it.

Such a human thing it is to remember the spirit of the past and to understand better what we have done and have been. Can all of it media hype, designed to “sell product”? We are tempted to say, yes, hype, hype and nothing but hype. Yet much of what our nostalgia dredges up was actually good in its day, and remains so.

Throughout Easter the Church is recalling the adventures of the Church in the weeks after Jesus died and then rose again. We sit around the campfire of our memories, telling stories about how it was then. Philip. Remember Philip who told Jesus, “just show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Of course he was seeing Jesus and therefore was looking at the Father, but he did not know it.

And do you remember what Jesus said just before his passion and death? That he would send the Spirit of Truth into our hearts. And that we would not be left orphans. It was hard to understand then and it is still pretty difficult.

Let us go over it one more time. Jesus seemed to say, first, that God the Abba was so much within Jesus that every time you see him it is the same thing as seeing God. Second, Jesus said, I am going to be so much within you—yes, you normal people—that whenever people see you it will be the same thing as seeing me! And of course, the Father is in me, so they see the Father too!

   “I almost have it,” Philip gulped.

So Jesus said it again. You will not see me anymore. But that doesn’t make me absent from you. I and Abba will be within you so that your very spirit will hold the Spirit of me and of the Father. All you need to do is to say “yes.”

Then Philip saw it. In the upper room he touched the truth. Very soon he was running from place to place doing miracles and preaching about the Messiah!

With one accord, the crowds paid attention to what was said by Philip when they heard it and saw the signs he was doing. For unclean spirits, crying out in a loud voice, came out of many possessed people, and many paralyzed or crippled people were cured. There was great joy in that city (First Reading)

We ourselves touch the truth and receive it also. Maybe it is not so dramatic as Philip's experience, but we have it every Sunday and any other day we choose to participate in Mass. We touch and receive Jesus on the tongue.

Simple? No.

Well, maybe it is simple. This Sunday let us remember again not hype but these deepest, dearest mysteries of our lives.