I am the way and the truth and the life.
No other person in history could say anything like this. Even religious leaders of the great traditions could point to a path separate from themselves. They taught truths as they understood them but did not claim to be truth itself. Instead they discovered or had revealed to them what it was that they taught. They no doubt claimed that those who followed their example and listened to their teaching would, in some sense, find life. But those teachers did not themselves expect to be the life found by their disciples. How different our Lord was from those superficially similar religious founders. He did not mince words. He spoke in a way that would have sounded crazy, like delusions of grandeur, if it were not for the utter sobriety, sanity, and goodness of the one who said it.
Jesus called himself the way. We know that he said this because he was not only the example of the life to which we are called, but that it was only by our union with him that we could live that life. We are called to take up our own crosses and follow Jesus. But this would have been impossible for us on our own. It is only by being in Jesus that we can walk in step with Jesus. Fortunately, his Spirit empowers us to do precisely this.
If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit (see Galatians 5:25).
Jesus was himself the truth. If the way he taught sometimes seemed circular, if it never resolved into the sort of concrete specific bullet points of doctrine we might have liked, it was because his teaching was not meant to stand alone, but rather, to point to him and reveal him. This transition from the static letter of the Law to the living truth found in Jesus was difficult to accept, especially for those who thought they had the greatest mastery over truth. Jesus was a truth over whom no one could have mastery, a truth that could only be approached in humility, and one which would always be full of surprises. The truth of Jesus can in fact be a great adventure for us, but only if we ease up our tight grip of control in his presence.
Jesus himself was the life that empowered his disciples to follow in his way and to grasp his truth. And he himself was also, as the culmination of that life, their ultimate reward, as he is meant to be our own. When we have difficulty imagining heaven, imagining how any 'place' could be so good that we wouldn't mind spending eternity there, it is probably because we are imagining something separate from Jesus himself. Jesus is the superabundant life that satisfies hunger and thirst forever. But are we aware of all that is on offer for us in our relationship with Jesus?
"Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us."
Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you for so long a time
and you still do not know me, Philip?
Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
We treat Jesus like a friend, a teacher, and a master, and indeed he is all of those things. But he is still more. He is the Son of God leading us to the Father, empowering us to share, by his Holy Spirit, in his own Sonship, so that we too might become children of the Father and live lives pleasing to him.
Let us discover within our hearts this longing that Philip admirably expressed, when he said "show us the Father". His was a cry much like that of Moses to God when he begged "Please show me your glory" (see Exodus 33:18). Once we find that our own hearts have this same desire we can then begin to taste its fulfillment in our relationship with Jesus himself. We will be more desirous that he become the way, the truth, and the life, for us. Because it is then that we will truly taste and see the goodness of the Lord for which Philip longed.
Father, show us your glory, shining on the face of Christ!
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (see Second Corinthians 3:18).
This is the revelation that makes all the difference, that turns everything around, just as the discovery of the resurrection did for the Apostles, to Peter, to James, and to Paul. And the degree to which it can also do so for us is truly limitless.
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