Jn 14: 1-6
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.
And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Inviting Jesus In
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.” These are comforting words that I crave, but I can’t force myself to not be troubled. Little things and big things have their way of seeping into my conscious awareness and my unconscious self. Jesus tells us something we want to hear and know: freedom from worry. To this welcome message Thomas, the realist, questions how. Thomas speaks for others in his challenge to Jesus by admitting that he just does not know the way.
In my frequent optimism I can overlook difficulties and unpleasant realities. I can naively say, “It will all work out.” The realists in my life don’t let me get away with that. Jesus’s response is unexpected. Maybe a practical answer is not given, but my viewpoint of reality changes when I live into the reality of Jesus as “the way and the truth and the life.”
Into what real situation do you want to invite the risen Lord Jesus this day?
—Joseph Lagan is the director of the Ignatian Spirituality Program of Denver.
Prayer
Come, Lord Jesus, into my day. In all the situations I face, let me see that you are the way, the truth, and the life. Amen.
—Joseph Lagan