Friday in the Fourth Week of Easter, May 8, 2020

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.”

Nearly half of St. John’s Gospel (chapters 13-21) is of events that take place from the time of the Last Supper through the days after the Resurrection.  This makes it very different from the other three Gospels.  By way of comparison, in St. Matthew’s Gospel, the account of the Last Supper until the Death of the Lord occupies only the last two thirds of chapter 26 through chapter 27, with chapter 28 recounting the Resurrection and the Lord’s appearances.  The first three Gospel writers seem to point their Gospels directly to the Lord’s Passion, whereas John seems to point his towards the teachings Jesus presents the night before his Death.  This gives these teachings greater emphasis and greater importance.  Here, Jesus gives his last will and testament, as it were.  

Perhaps the words for today’s reading are the best known of these final teachings.  Jesus is consoling his Apostles.  Just before these words, Jesus had foretold his betrayal and dismissed Judas Iscariot.  Then Jesus began to speak of his going to a place where his Apostles could not go.  Peter, greatly alarmed, declared that he would follow him wherever he should go.  The Lord then foretells Peter’s denials.  The Apostles are shaken and confused.  Jesus reassures them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  You have faith in God; have faith also in me.”  What he is asking of them is as great as what God asked of Abraham almost two thousand years before.  God had told Abraham, then known as Abram, to move his family away from his clan and into a new land, which he would give to him and his heirs.  Throughout Abraham’s lifetime, God promised him that he would have a son by his wife Sarah, until this came true in their old age.  And not long afterwards, God had demanded the child back as a sacrifice, and Abraham prepared to carry out God’s will when, at the last moment, God prevented him from slaying him.  God had put Abraham in numerous impossible positions and delivered him.  Even at the time of his death, far from possessing the land in which he lived, he owned only the cave in which his wife Sarah was buried.  In spite of everything, when there seemed no rational reason to do so, Abraham persisted in his faith.  Jesus tells the Apostles that he will be betrayed by one of their number, that he will suffer Death and be buried, but that they are to persist in their faith in him nonetheless.  And this is what faith really is, to believe in God and his Providence even when there seems no reason to do so.  Otherwise, what we have is what Jesus describes in the Parable of the Sower: “And he that received the seed upon stony ground, is he that hears the word, and immediately receives it with joy. Yet it has no root in him, but is only for a time: and when there arises tribulation and persecution because of the word, he is presently scandalized” (Matthew 13, 20-21).  

In the case of the Apostles, there faith will be shaken at his arrest when they flee, but it is not broken.  They still believe in Jesus, but their faith has not matured — it has not been confirmed by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost — and they hide.  

We who truly believe that Jesus is the only Way and Truth and Life must pray constantly for the increase of our Faith so that it not be as much as shaken by the trials and persecutions of the present world, but may instead grow because of them.