Friday in the Fourth Week of Easter, April 30, 2021

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 at the Last Supper in St. John’s Gospel.  Immediately before the words of this reading, he has foretold the denials of Peter, and the Apostles are greatly disturbed.  The Lord tells them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me.”  A better translation might be, Do not let your hearts be agitated: believe in God and believe in me.  As St. John will elaborate in his First Letter, written years after the Resurrection, “Fear is not in love: but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with sin. And he that fears is not perfected in love” (1 John 4, 18).  The Apostles are to fix their hearts on the Lord and not to keep looking back at themselves, which those do who remain attached to this world to one degree or another.

“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 Lord also offers them the consolation of their heavenly destiny, which he will go from this world “to prepare” for them.  This has the sound of a father who leaves the family in their old dwelling in order to get their new dwelling ready for them to move into.  In the context, it could mean setting up the tent they would live in, or making repairs to a house in a town.  The Greek word translated here as “going” properly means “to make a journey” or “to travel”.  This implies all the work necessary in making the journey. Much more is involved than simply “going”.  Traveling meant toil.  The Lord speaks of “preparing” or “making ready” the rooms or lodgings in his Father’s house for them.  This is a way of saying that he will return to heaven to make them, the Apostles, ready for eternal life.  The eternal halls of the heavenly courts have always stood ready for us, but not until the time of grace with the coming of the Lord have we been prepared for them.  From heaven he and the Father will send the Holy Spirit upon them, and there, ever before the Father, he would intercede for the salvation of the world: “He is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7, 25).  

The Lord Jesus tells them: “Where I am going you know the way.”  He reveals to them that they, in fact, do know the way to his destination.  There was then a pause as the Apostles considered this.  Then Thomas burst out with, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”  Thomas speaks three times in the Gospel of John.  When the Lord announces to his disciples that he will return to Judea, where he was recently nearly killed, in order to go to the death bed of Lazarus, Thomas said to the other Apostles, “Let us go with him that we may die with him” (John 11, 16).  And then when the Lord appears to him after he has risen from the dead, he told him to put his fingers into the wounds in his hands.  Thomas responded, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20, 28).  Here, we see Thomas determined to follow Jesus, and he does not want to be separated from him.  The outburst of Thomas is like that of a child seeing his beloved father leaving for some unknown destination and no time given for his return.  But the Lord comforts him: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  The Lord himself is the road to the Father.  The Lord Jesus is himself our life.  Through faith, Thomas and the other Apostles would be closer to the Lord than they ever were before he ascended into heaven.

There is no place or time or situation in our lives where we will not find the Lord already there with his arms open for us who believe in him.