Looking to the Father

Looking to the Father
By Alphonse Osbert

Therefore, Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in the same way. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.’”

John 5:19-20

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In this painting, which Osbert titled The Solitude of Christ, the lone figure of the Savior stands bathed in ethereal light — yet He is not entirely alone. Beside Him lingers another presence, faint as a shadow but in clear similitude of Jesus, and towards whom Christ seems to be directed. It is a striking image: Jesus in solitude, yet still accompanied by the Father. It is also a portrait of how He lived His entire mortal life.

Jesus sought solitude often. After feeding the five thousand, “He went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone” (Matthew 14:23). When the press of crowds grew heavy, “He withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed” (Luke 5:16). These were not moments of absence. They were moments of alignment — the Son turning His face toward the Father, to listen, receive and prepare. As Mother Teresa taught, "We need silence to be alone with God, to speak to him, to listen to him, to ponder his words deep in our hearts. We need to be alone with God in silence to be renewed and transformed. … In it we are filled with the energy of God himself that makes us do all things with joy."

And in that sacred stillness, a pattern emerges — one that defined everything Christ did. Alexander Maclaren described it simply: “The pattern of Christ is this—He looked to the Father in everything, doing nothing of Himself, but referring all to the will and counsel of the One who sent Him.” The Savior’s solitude was never empty. It was filled with the Father’s voice, the Father’s will, the Father’s work. As James E. Talmage wrote, Christ’s works “are the Father’s works, wrought by the Son in the Father’s name, as a demonstration that the Father and Son are one in purpose, in plan, and in the ministry of salvation.”

This is the similitude of Christ — not merely imitating the Father, but embodying His will so completely that to see the Son was to see the Father at work among His children. Richard G. Scott reflected, “He did not speak His own words, but the Father’s words. He did not do His own works, but the Father’s works.” Osbert’s painting beautifully captures the unseen presence that never left Him — the Father, whose purposes He carried into every wilderness, every mountain, every sorrow foretold by Isaiah: “He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows… he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities…and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4-5).

Thomas Merton wrote that the one “who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness…comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety.” Christ knew that companionship perfectly. And He invites us into it. When we withdraw to pray, when we quiet the noise and look to the Father as He did, we discover that solitude is not loneliness. It is holy ground — the place where, like the Savior, we learn whose work we are here to do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~