Friday in the Sixth Week of Easter, May 19, 2023

John 16, 20-23

Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy. When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world. So you also are now in anguish. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. On that day you will not question me about anything. Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.”

“Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.”  In order to understand this Gospel Reading we must understand what has just preceded it.  The Lord has spoken of his leaving his disciples and then of their seeing him again.  The disciples then asked one another, “What is this that he says to us: A little while, and you shall not see me: and again a little while, and you shall see me, and, Because I go to the Father?”  To which the Lord responds, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, etc.”  The Lord’s departure and his return can be understood in two ways.  First, in his dying on the Cross, his Resurrection from the dead, and his subsequent appearances to his Apostles.  Second, in his Ascension into heaven and his Second Coming at which he will judge the living and the dead.  The Apostles certainly did grieve and mourn over his Death and rejoice in his Resurrection.  And since his Ascension into heaven we may be said to grieve and mourn in our longing for him to return.  This grief and mourning will be turned into joy for those who have loved him and persevered in the Faith.  If we look forward to something then we rejoice when it happens.  The world, however, rejoice over the Death of the Lord, thinking him to be finished off forever.  This can also be understood of the world when the saints of God are martyred or there is any apparent stumbling in the progress of the Church in her mission to convert the world.  Certainly the world rejoices now at the disappearance of morality in the western world.  This rejoicing is spoken of in the Book of Revelation when the Lord’s two great witnesses are slain: “They that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them and make merry: and shall send gifts one to another, because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt upon the earth.”  We might think of the two witnesses as faith and reason.

“When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world.”  The Lord compares the “anguish” of the Apostles to that of a woman about to give birth: “So you also are now in anguish.”  This image helps us to understand something of the tumult going on within the Apostles as they listened to the Lord speak to them, a tumult brought on by his definitively telling them that their dream of a new kingdom of Israel, which had seemed so close, was not to be, that he had not come to establish it, and that he was leaving them for some unknown destination.  Their world was shaken to its core and it seemed that after giving up everything they had loved and possessed, after the relentless, sleepless, hungry days they had endured for three years — was all for nothing.

“But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.”  The Apostles may not have heard or understood the words Jesus says now, as they reeled from learning that he planned to leave them.  We can also understand this as pertaining to the joy we shall have when the Lord comes again.  “On that day you will not question me about anything.”  On Easter Sunday evening, when the Apostles saw the Lord again, they did not ask him any questions but simply rejoiced.  At the great judgment at the end of the world, all of the questions we have now about why certain events happened in our lives or in history will be answered: no one will come away from the judgment without understanding.  

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.”  The Lord has said this before during his discourse.  Indeed, he has commanded the Apostles to pray in his name.  Here, he reassures them that what they ask for in order to carry out God’s will would be granted to them.  This promise is a sign to them and to us of the Lord’s continual care for us as we prepare ourselves for when he comes again.