Friday in the Fourth Week of Easter, May 13, 2022

John 14:1-6

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way.” Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass is taken from the Lord’s words to the Apostles during the Last Supper.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.”  The Lord is preparing his Apostles for his Death, and also for the time of separation from them after his Ascension.  The Greek word translated here as “troubled” means something more like “agitated”.  He is not saying to them, Do not panic, which they might have found alarming in itself, but he does address the agitation they are experiencing as he is speaking to them.  We recall that he has already broken the bread and told them, “This is my Body”, and taken the wine and said, “This is my Blood which will be poured out for you.”  Certainly, this would have left them shaken.

“You have faith in God; have faith also in me.”  Literally, from the Greek: “You believe in God; believe in me.”  This has a stronger sense than the lectionary version.  We have faith in someone to do something, but we believe in a person for his own sake.  The Greek word used in both clauses is the same.  The Son does not make a distinction between the belief that is owed to the Father and that owed to himself.  In this way he claims divinity as much as when he told the crowds, “The Father and I are one.”

“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”  Our belief in Jesus as God enables us to put the greatest trust in his words.  Here, he teaches that there are many lodgings in his Father’s house.  He taught during his Public Life, “How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leads to life: and few are they who find it!” (Matthew 7, 14).  That is, a small fraction of the people who have lived on the earth.  However, though the percentage is small, the number of the saved can still be a large one.  After the conclusion of their lives here, they would live in heaven — and not at the fringes of heaven, but in the Father’s own house.  “If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?”  The Lord says to the Apostles that if they believe that his word is eminently worthy of trust in other matters, it is so in this one.  He tells them that not only are their many lodgings in his Father’s house but his purpose in departing from them is so that he may go there to “prepare” these lodgings for them.  That is, he will provide them the graces they need in order to become great saints: and the greater their sanctity, the greater their capacity to experience the Love of God, so that their “lodging” in heaven, consisting of their dwelling in the unimpeded love of God will be great indeed.  “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.”  Their eternity will be spent with Jesus, who led them through Palestine during their lifetimes and who would lead them to holiness and to heaven.

“Where I am going you know the way.”  That is, according to the Greek, Where I am departing.  The Apostles have known (the verb is in the perfect tense) the way, or, “road”.  They have known the road on which the Lord is departing because it is the road of obedience to the Father that they have seen in his every movement and heard in his every word.  “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”  The same Thomas who told the other Apostles, “Let us also go, that we may die with him”, when the Lord returned to hostile Judea in order to raise up Lazarus, asks this.  He imagines himself trying to physically follow after the Lord who has vanished from sight.  ““I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  That is, joining in the Son’s obedience to the Father is the only “road” to the Father.  We do not merely imitate the Lord’s obedience but join in it through our being made members of his Body.  Conforming ourselves inward and outward to the Lord Jesus brings us ever nearer to the eternal lodgings in heaven.