Do not let your hearts be troubled.
You have faith in God; have faith also in me.
He had just recently given them what seemed to be very good reasons to let their hearts be troubled. He had revealed the fact that he would be betrayed both by Judas and by Peter. The circumstances that were coming were indeed troubling. We know from the other Gospels that he had by now made several explicit predictions of his passion. In John's Gospel we see references that are somewhat more oblique. He spoke of the hour when he would be lifted up, the fact that he would lay down his life for his sheep, like a grain of wheat that first died in order to give life. As that ominous hour drew near it is no wonder that it was the disciples natural disposition and tendency to experience anxiety.
Jesus told them in advance about what was going to happen, but not in order that they could somehow circumvent it. He told them so that they could believe it was a part of the plan. If they could trust him, and believe what he told them about reality rather than how it appeared, they could maintain peace of heart. They needed to believe what he said to them even about how they themselves would fail. He knew it. He was not surprised by it. This too was a part of his plan, something in which when sin abounded grace would abound still more (see Romans 5:20). But this would only work if they had faith in Jesus such that he, and not they themselves, was the center of their lives. If they remained egocentric prisoners within themselves they would necessarily view every failure as catastrophic. But if they trusted the words of Jesus they could have a higher, heavenly vantage point.
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 was helping to prepare them to see things as they really were, from a heavenly, eternal perspective. He was already preparing them for their heavenly homes by this transformation of their minds to function in a more transcendent way. He was thus the way, transfiguring the intellect and will of his disciples to shine with the radiance of his own light, as he would indeed one day do also for their physical bodies. He was also the truth, the Word through whom all things were made. When this truth was fully known and internalized one already dwelt in heaven with the Father and the Son. It was not merely intellectual knowledge, nor like the the supposed mystical knowledge of the Gnostics. Rather, it was a relational, we should say spousal, type of knowing that was being described. Because this was so it could be something that ordinary knowledge could not: the source of life. Faith centered on Jesus was the way to unite oneself to him, by believing what he said about himself, God, and the world, and thus experiencing eternal life in communion with God himself.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.”
We should return briefly to the beginning of our Gospel passage in which Jesus said, "Do not let your hearts be troubled". The point was not merely that there was a better future state that awaited them, and that is why they could have peace. It was rather that, in virtue of being on the way to that future they already in some sense possessed it. Faith made the future to be mysteriously somehow already present. Thus the predictive words of Jesus were powerful because they not only saw beyond the darkness but were in fact a bridge to the other side.
Pat Barrett - The Way (New Horizon)
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