5th Sunday of Easter

Gospel Reflection

John 14:1-12

Today’s Gospel takes us back to the hours immediately preceding Jesus’ most trying time –his agony and passion. This was the emotive occasion of his final Passover meal with the men he had chosen as Apostles. Given the circumstance of this most important religious custom and that of the threats that these men knew were being directed towards Our Lord, they would have hung on his every word. No one would have done so more than the young John who records the following consoling counsel and promise of Christ: “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” Jesus speaks to them of the reward of eternal life in terms of a grand house belonging to a loving Father and in which a large family lives and shares in the inheritance. In this mansion Jesus himself will live and occupy pride of place, while welcoming all his brothers and sisters into his joyful company.

Christ uses different comparisons to speak of heaven because no one word or analogy can do it justice. As St. Paul says: “Eye has not seen nor ear heard: nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those that love Him” (1 Cor 2: 9). It is a kingdom, in which the royal priesthood of faithful disciples reign with Him. It is a banquet in which all are nourished by the bread of life who is Jesus Himself – that is by loving communion with Him. It is the place of the Master’s joy, into which those who have been faithful in little things enter into the possession of far greater goods. The Catechism of the Catholic Church accordingly teaches: “We can therefore hope in the glory of heaven promised by God to those who love him and do his will. In every circumstance, each one of us should hope, with the grace of God, to persevere ‘to the end’ and to obtain the joy of heaven, as God’s eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace of Christ. In hope, the Church prays for ‘all men to be saved.’ She longs to be united with Christ, her Bridegroom, in the glory of heaven” (n. 1821). And St. Teresa of Avila urged herself, her followers and her readers: “Hope, O my soul, hope.… Dream that the more you struggle, the more you prove the love that you bear your God, and the more you will rejoice one day with your Beloved, in a happiness and rapture that can never end.”

The Easter season is still with us with the frequent references to Jesus resurrected, who is “the same yesterday, today and for ever” (Hebrews 13: 8). We need to see in his Resurrection, not only the proof of his divinity, but also of his ever present holy humanity, present to us especially in the Eucharist, our current Bread of Life. We also need to realize it is the evidence of the promised reward of the future new creation that has already begun with Christ, and with Mary, assumed body and soul to the place of her son’s glory. This ‘place’ will one day ‘expand’ with the resurrection of those who have died in the love of God. This is very much a part of the “Good News” Jesus brought into the world. It is essential to the foundation of Christian hope, leading us to understand that life, with all its challenges, its high and low moments, is not meaningless, merely ending in death and the void. All are called to meet the Love of loves,

having learned to love God and others in this life. For this we have the grace of Christ, and the knowledge of his humanity. Through Him we learn who God is and how He loves us. “He who sees me,” Jesus tells the Apostles, “sees the Father.”