Do not let your hearts be troubled.
You have faith in God; have faith also in me.
They grew troubled as his hour drew near, as his predictions of his passion became less veiled and more explicit. This coincided with circumstances that seemed to be more and more beyond his control. Certainly they had seen that he was able to do mighty deeds, to heal, to calm storms, to multiply loaves of bread, and was able, by these feats, to provoke those in authority. But it did not seem to be in his power to stem the ever increasing tide of antagonism to him and his mission. The antidote to hearts troubled by these circumstances was to be faith, "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?
There was a higher plan at work than that of the antagonism and opposition from the religious leaders and rulers. Jesus was giving them a ground for hope that not only applied to them at that time but to all people in all times. For we cannot maintain the earthly habitation of our bodies forever. We all must taste death eventually, until the Lord Jesus returns. But by his own death and resurrection Jesus was preparing something more permanent for us. He was giving us the ground for an eternal hope, something that made the sufferings of this life seem short and trivial by comparison.
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens (see Second Corinthians 5:1).
Jesus would go first and prepare the way, but he would not leave his disciples alone, forced to attempt to retrace his steps without him. Rather he returned by his resurrection and then by his spiritual presence in order to take them to himself. Similarly, we are not left alone or without direction. Jesus remains with his Church always unto the end of the age. When we become confused and lost, as Thomas was, and when we ask, "Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?" Jesus, present in his Church, responds the same now as then: "I am the way and the truth and the life".
Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life.
That Jesus is way, truth, and life, must be more than a platitude that sounds nice. It must define how we live. To the question of how we give order and direction to our lives we must begin from the answer that Jesus is the way. To the question of what we believe about ourselves, the world, and the meaning of life, we must begin with the answer that Jesus is the truth. And as to the question of what we ultimately seek, and in what our hearts will at least find rest, we must begin from the answer that Jesus is the life. Other principles to guide our life, beliefs, and pursuits that are not related to these and not informed by the the centrality of Jesus himself are at best partial and are in fact probably dangerous deceptions.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you know me, then you will also know my Father.
However much we may know Jesus, there is always an ever greater mystery. We are creatures, he the creator. However much the greatest minds can know about him there is always still more that remains unknown. But this is not meant to discourage us. It is an invitation. We come to know him a little, and in that amount taste and see that he is good. And so we can be confident that to know him more will be better still. So we can then desire to grow in our capacity to know him, with the expectation that he himself will reveal himself, his Father, and the Spirit to us.
Philip said to him,
"Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us."
Philip was not wrong to desire to find satisfaction and repose in the vision of the Father. What he missed at that moment was that the fullness of that vision was to be found in Jesus Christ himself and nowhere else. It was meant to begin at the level of faith, believing in Jesus as the revelation of the Father, in spite of dire and dark circumstances.
The disciples had trouble accepting Jesus amidst the circumstances, had trouble accepting what it meant to live by faith. Jesus himself was punching a path through every potential obstacle to unbelief, preparing human nature to be a fitting part of the true heavenly temple. The apparent power of circumstances over the life of Jesus would be revealed to be merely apparent and illusory. His word, not those appearances, defined his path, even including his suffering and death. This way of faith that Jesus revealed and opened would then be the very path for his followers and all subsequent generations of disciples to live by faith, buoyed by a hope that is greater than anything our timebound mortality can offer.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever believes in me will do the works that I do,
and will do greater ones than these,
because I am going to the Father.
Following Jesus as way, believing in him as truth, and desiring him as life, can so conform us to him that his works mysteriously become our own. We should seek and desire to see the still greater works that Jesus desires to work through his body the Church in our world today. All of this seems implausible at best to the attitude of modern doubt and skepticism. But Jesus has already blazed the trail beyond appearances, and has invited us to dwell and to rest in the truth, that is, in himself.
When we put first things first the Church will be built up in love, peace, and joy as she is meant to be built. The gifts of all will be at the service of those who need them and all things will be well ordered. Those meant to focus on prayer and the word of God will do so. Those meant to focus on acts of service will do so. The witness of Christian joy will draw more and more people to the "living stone, rejected by human beings but chosen and precious in the sight of God". In turn they will become themselves living stones in God's spiritual house. What would this joyous reality look like? It would be a chorus of right praise to God, "a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices".
Does something this good look impossible? Do we desire to ask for Jesus to show us something else instead, other than what we see, to show us the Father in a way that can overlook the apparent contradictions? Instead Jesus has revealed that we can believe just as firmly in the midst of these apparent contradictions as we await the fulfillment of our hope, the firstfruits of which we taste even now.
Exult, you just, in the LORD;
praise from the upright is fitting.
Give thanks to the LORD on the harp;
with the ten-stringed lyre chant his praises.
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