Do not let your hearts be troubled.
The hearts of the disciples became increasingly fearful as Jesus death was predicted and as his hour drew closer. Jesus wanted his disciples to understand that the hour of his death was not an accident or an ultimate tragedy. He told them that no one took his life from him but that he laid it down of his own accord. He would take it up again just as freely (see John 10:18).
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?
Jesus explained that he was not going to be wiped out or annihilated but was rather, in a spiritual sense, going somewhere to do something. He was the bridegroom going to make the Father's house ready for the bride. He himself was the true heavenly temple being prepared to welcome us as living stones in a great expansion project. His human nature was made perfect to serve as the keystone of this temple by the way of his death and resurrection. In short, his hour was coming only because everything was going exactly as he had planned from the beginning.
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.
There won't be any vacant rooms in heaven after the final judgment because Jesus himself promised to bring his elect to himself to consummate their union together. It was ultimately a chasm that could not be crossed on our part as men. We could not build ourselves a bridge to God or to heaven in spite of Babel and countless failed projects that have attempted to do so since. That it why Jesus himself came in order to cross the great divide. By his incarnation, heaven and earth were united. By his cross he freed us from the chains of sin that prevented us from sharing in this reality with him. By his resurrection he himself infused the power we would need to follow in his steps.
Jesus said to him, "I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me."
There was no way to the Father except through Jesus, and had he not come there would have been no way at all. Even now the way that has been opened may seem obscure and difficult. With Thomas we are tempted to ask, "Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?" Yet we learn, mysteriously, that though we don't know the specifics of the route or the destination, we do somehow know the way because we know Jesus himself. The more we allow him to be our guide in all things the more we will begin to experience him drawing us, and taking us to himself. We experience this preeminently during the mass. The mass has been called the marriage feast of the lamb precisely because in it we already begin to celebrate the heavenly realities of eternity even now here on earth.
We ourselves are proclaiming this good news to you
that what God promised our fathers
he has brought to fulfillment for us, their children, by raising up Jesus
In Jesus a fallen world is raised up. He was the yes to every promise of God, the fulfillment of the deepest longing of every human heart. Those of us whom he has touched with this resurrection power now have a joyful obligation to be "his witnesses before the people". In order to be good witnesses let us ourselves receive the full joy and assurance of knowing that the king who is our bridegroom has taken his throne and that his reign will know no end.
"I myself have set up my king
on Zion, my holy mountain."
I will proclaim the decree of the LORD:
The LORD said to me, "You are my Son;
this day I have begotten you."
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