Someone recently asked: “How can I get to know Jesus?” I said: “Read the Gospel of St. John, and especially the final discourse of Jesus, given at the Last Supper.”
Over these 5 Chapters, we hear Jesus revealing the secrets of his heart. He speaks of his relationship with his Father; of the meaning of his mission; of the greatness of the Christian vocation; of the activity of the Holy Spirit; of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Clearly every word of this discourse springs from love, and manifests love: the human love of Jesus for his Father; the love, both human and divine, that Jesus has for us; the mutual love of the Trinitarian Persons; then also the command that we love as we have been loved.
Today’s Gospel passage from Chapter 14 is for many people a particular favourite. It’s frequently read in the liturgy, and often at funerals. For all its familiarity, we can never exhaust the depths of its meaning.
As so often in John, the words of Jesus here bear various levels of interpretation. As Jesus speaks, he is looking ahead, towards his imminent Passion and death. His hearers, the 11 disciples, by contrast do not know what is to happen, and they‘re still in the dark about its purpose and meaning. Also: they still do not yet fully grasp who Jesus is. So they barely understand what he says. But we who look backwards to the death of Jesus, and to the Last Supper - often enough in the context of our own Holy Eucharist - we read these same words in the light of Easter, and of our baptism. So we are privileged to understand, in a way those first disciples could not. And of course we rightly read these words as addressed also directly to ourselves, here and now. For us they are words of divine revelation: full of consolation; full of the Holy Spirit; words to light up our path through our whole life, and beyond.
Jesus says: Do not let your hearts be troubled (14:1)
At once, paradox! Twice in the immediately preceding Chapters, St. John has noted that Jesus was troubled (12:27; 13:21). Now Jesus is announcing that he will leave his disciples; that one of them will betray him; that Peter will 3 times deny him; that all the rest will be scattered; that he himself will suffer a horrible death; also that they can expect, in due course, to follow him in martyrdom. Most certainly then, Jesus is not offering false or superficial consolations. Nor is he calling us to merely Stoic fortitude. Nor is he telling us that if we grieve - if ever we suffer mental anguish - we are somehow failing in virtue.
No: in the first place Jesus is insisting that his imminent departure is not an abandonment of his disciples. On the contrary, it’s entirely for the sake of an incomparably greater union, a more intimate presence, a more complete self-gift in love. Then also Jesus is insisting that the centre and focus of our life is not to be here, but elsewhere. “Do not be troubled” he says – not because there is nothing to be troubled about. Actually I think that, quite apart from any personal troubles, anyone who is not troubled by the state of our world, and our society, and our Church, just now, must be simply unaware of what is going on all around. But no: the point is surely this. Even amid the most extreme circumstances; even amid the most terrible suffering, even amid whatever loss or destruction or death, we Christians can and should maintain a deep inner peace (cf. 14:27).
The source of this peace is God. Jesus says: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (14:11). And as a result of his Paschal mystery, we in our turn are to be in God, and God will be in us. That is, we baptised Christians will be caught up into the life of the Holy Trinity: bearing each of the Trinitarian Persons in our soul. Of course this mystery is to be consummated only in eternity. But in principle heaven has already begun: we already have full access to it; we already in principle possess it. This gift is so big that most of us struggle to realise its implications. But all the Saints bear witness to its truth, its reality.
The Apostle Thomas, most usefully for us, seems to be completely out of his depths. So he blurts out: “We do not know where you are going” (14:5). Maybe we could re-phrase that. “We don’t know where or what God is. We can’t see him, or imagine him, because he is infinitely above and beyond us.” “And we do not know the way” cries Thomas. Or: how could a ladder be erected between earth and heaven; between the created and the Creator; between what is finite, fleshly, mortal, sinful, and the all-holy God? “I am the way” says Jesus (14:6). Yes, such a ladder, such a free-way has now been given: through the Incarnation, and through the saving death and resurrection of Jesus.
The Apostle Philip chips in. “Show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied” (14:8). Philip here surely identifies correctly what alone will ultimately satisfy us, and what precisely Jesus came to give us. Yet Philip receives a gentle rebuke: not for his request, but for failing to see that its fulfilment is even now before his eyes. “Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father” (14:9) says Jesus – because “I and the Father are one” (10:30). This is the message of St. John: this is our faith, and our joy: this is the good news we proclaim. In Jesus we can see God. In Jesus God comes to us. Elsewhere in the New Testament we read: “he is the mediator between God and man” (1 Tm 2:5); “he is the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15); “he reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature” (Hb 1:3).
The Catholic Church must bear witness to Jesus, God and man, Lord and Saviour, until the end of the world. She must also mediate him, in every circumstance of human history. She must do his works, and greater works than these (14:12). That is, she must limitlessly extend the one great work of Jesus. She does this through Jesus, and with Jesus, and in Jesus. Above all she does it in every celebration of the Holy Eucharist. For here Jesus is made sacramentally present, in all his saving power: to the glory of God the Father.