Friday in the Fourth Week of Easter, May 5, 2023

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.”

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.”  The Lord consoles his Apostles after he has told them, “Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You shall seek me. And as I said to the Jews: Where I go you cannot come; so I say to you now” (John 13, 33).  This provoked from Peter, “Why cannot I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you” (John 13, 37).  Thomas will follow up during the present Gospel Reading when he pleads, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”  The Lord says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled” or, “agitated”.  In the agitation especially in Peter and Thomas we can see how much the Apostles loved Jesus and depended on him.  There is something more here than losing the leader who was going to overthrow the Romans.  This concern reflects a very real, very deep love for Jesus Christ by the men who had followed him these three or more years.  He had, very literally, become their life.  We can reflect on how the Lord has become our life, too.

“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?”  The God who came to earth and had nowhere to lay his head has made ready enough lodgings for all who follow him.  Jesus states to the Apostles that he himself is going to prepare a place for them.  He is setting their reward before them even before they have preached the Gospel to the world.  We ought to be struck with awe that the eternal God, infinite in power, could be touched, heard, and seen.  Here he is speaking to twelve men of no great accomplishment and promising them a place in heaven, which all but one of them would attain.  And he speaks to us here and now in the same way.  When we read this verse of the Holy Scriptures, the Lord is looking us in the eye and telling us of the heavenly places reserved for us and which will be ours if we remain faithful to him for the short few years we are on earth.

“Where I am going you know the way.”  This translation follows the Greek word order.  Better English would be: You know the way (or road) where I am going.  We can understand “way” in terms of destination, as in heaven.  Or we can understand it in terms of the “way” to arrive there.  Thomas the Apostle understands the Lord as speaking of a destination: “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”  Thomas is still thinking that Jesus has come to defeat the Romans.  Where is their general going?   The Lord’s answer can mean both the destination and the route to it: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Jesus himself is the way, and so we imitate him as best we can with the help of grace.  He is the only way, too, so we imitate him only.  He is the only truth, as well.  He is like a solitary light in a dark room: everything we can see, we see only by his light.  Any attempt to understand anything in that room outside the context of that light is false and fantasy.

We live in a troubled and fracturing world.  Jesus alone is certain, solid. Eternal, and calling us to him.