Believing is seeing
I wasn’t named for the Beloved Disciple whose feast we celebrate today. I was named for my father. The story goes that my grandmother—a true boss—walked into the hospital room after my mother gave birth and declared that I would be a Junior. For years, I chafed at what I perceived as being boxed into an identity. Maybe it was because my family called me ‘little John,’ a nickname that only deepened my teenage angst, even as it would one day be proof of bond with my father that I would treasure.
Names carry meaning, and so does identity. Today’s feast brings me back to both—but even more, to vision and faith. In our culture, we often say, “seeing is believing,” privileging empirical evidence. Yet John’s Gospel flips this: “believing is seeing.” The beloved disciple models this at the empty tomb. He arrives first, looks in, and then enters. The text tells us simply: “He saw and believed.” What did he see? Burial cloths—not the risen Lord. Faith opened his vision.
John echoes this in the first reading: “What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life.” The Incarnation is tangible—heard, seen, touched. Think Nativity scenes and the wonder of small children. Yet John begins his Gospel not with the manger but with an abstract claim: “In the beginning was the Word.” His point, perhaps, is that God is saying through an entire human life: “This is who I AM.” Perhaps John was trying to make sense of his friend and companion, Jesus of Nazareth, whose Easter absence ironically became the evidence that opened his eyes.
I think of my own son, now 15 and grappling with his faith. I’m not worried about him or his soul. He just wants proof. I cannot blame him. I want things to make sense too. We long for evidence we can touch. Yet faith often begins where proof ends.
Why does this matter for Catholic Charities? Because our work depends on this same inversion. If we wait to “see” transformation before we believe in it, we will never act. Believing in the dignity of every person makes seeing Christ’s presence—in the poor, the migrant, the elderly, the child—possible.
Believing is seeing—and that belief drives us to build communities of justice and mercy, even and especially when evidence seems thin.
John DeCostanza works at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago as Vice President for Faith and Mission and sees Christ at work each day in the witness of his colleagues.