20180427
THE BASIS FOR PROCLAIMING THE UNIVERSAL
SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRIST FOR THE WORLD
27 APRIL, 2018, Friday, 4th Week of Easter
Readings
at Mass
Liturgical
Colour: White.
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First reading
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Acts 13:26-33 ©
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God has fulfilled his promise by raising Jesus from the dead
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Paul stood up in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia, held up a
hand for silence and began to speak:
‘My
brothers, sons of Abraham’s race, and all you who fear God, this message of
salvation is meant for you. What the people of Jerusalem and their rulers did,
though they did not realise it, was in fact to fulfil the prophecies read on
every sabbath. Though they found nothing to justify his death, they condemned
him and asked Pilate to have him executed. When they had carried out everything
that scripture foretells about him they took him down from the tree and buried
him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he appeared
to those who had accompanied him from Galilee to Jerusalem: and it is these
same companions of his who are now his witnesses before our people.
‘We have
come here to tell you the Good News. It was to our ancestors that God made the
promise but it is to us, their children, that he has fulfilled it, by raising
Jesus from the dead. As scripture says in the second psalm: You are my
son: today I have become your father.’
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Responsorial Psalm
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Psalm 2:6-11 ©
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You are my Son. It is I who have begotten you
this day.
or
Alleluia!
‘It is I who have set up my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.’
I will announce the decree of the Lord:
The Lord said to me: ‘You are my Son.
It is I who have begotten you this day.
You are my Son. It is I who have begotten you
this day.
or
Alleluia!
‘Ask and I shall bequeath you the nations,
put the ends of the earth in your possession.
With a rod of iron you will break them,
shatter them like a potter’s jar.’
You are my Son. It is I who have begotten you
this day.
or
Alleluia!
Now, O kings, understand,
take warning, rulers of the earth;
serve the Lord with awe
and trembling, pay him your homage.
You are my Son. It is I who have begotten you
this day.
or
Alleluia!
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Gospel Acclamation
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Col3:1
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Alleluia, alleluia!
Since you have been brought back to true life with Christ,
you must look for the things that are in heaven, where Christ is,
sitting at God’s right hand.
Alleluia!
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Or:
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Jn14:6
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Alleluia, alleluia!
I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, says the Lord;
No one can come to the Father except through me.
Alleluia!
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Gospel
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John 14:1-6 ©
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I am the Way, the Truth and the Life
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Jesus said to his disciples:
‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Trust in God still, and trust in me.
There are many rooms in my Father’s house;
if there were not, I should have told you.
I am going now to prepare a place for you,
and after I have gone and prepared you a place,
I shall return to take you with me;
so that where I am
you may be too.
You know the way to the place where I am going.’
Thomas said, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can
we know the way?’ Jesus said:
‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.
No one can come to the Father except through me.’
THE BASIS FOR PROCLAIMING THE UNIVERSAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRIST
FOR THE WORLD
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [ ACTS 13:26-33; JN 14:1-6 ]
Many people
today live in constant anxiety and fear. They are concerned about
their life, their future, their health, their family, their financial status,
and their job. In a word, they are worried about their security. To
us all, Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still,
and trust in me.” Yes, the basis to overcome all fear is our faith in
God. But, is God reliable? Is He real? Can He protect us and give
us life? How do we know for certain? The truth is that people do not really
believe in God even though some might believe in Him intellectually.
What then is our
basis for trusting in God? The liturgy proclaims that this faith in
God and therefore in divine providence is found in Jesus. Indeed, the
Father is the source of Life, Truth and our Origin and Destiny. So when
Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the
Father except through me”, He is claiming to be the expression of the Father
and therefore the access to life and truth.
What then do
we really mean when we say that Jesus is The Way, The Truth and The Life?
In order to understand this claim of Jesus, we must clarify the identity
of Jesus. How do we know that Jesus is Lord?
Today, the first
reading gives us the answer. If the early Christians came to proclaim
Jesus as Lord and the Son of God, it was because they came to recognize the divinity
of Jesus and His identification with God who is called the Father. How
did the early Christians come to such a conclusion, considering that
they were monotheists, being Jews?
If St Paul and
the early Christians could so confidently proclaim the Lordship of Jesus, it
was because, as they said, “God raised him from the dead, for many days he
appeared to those who had accompanied him from Galilee to Jerusalem: and it is
these same companions of his who are now his witnesses before our
people.” It was their encounter with the Risen Lord that
helped them to discover that Jesus of Nazareth is the revelation of God in
person. Within this context, St Paul in the first reading speaks from
hindsight that such work is all within the plan of God and Jesus therefore is
the fulfillment of God’s plan as foretold in the scriptures and the prophecies.
Hence, in
today’s gospel, when St John speaks of Jesus as “the Way, the Truth and the
Life” and that “No one can come to the Father” except through Jesus, he is
simply telling us that Jesus is the revelation of the Father.
As such, He is also the revealer and the revealed. If we want to know who
God is, if we want to know the heart of God, then we need only to come to
Jesus. This explains why Jesus told His disciples, “If you know me, you
know my Father too. From this moment you know him and have seen
him.” And when Philip asked, “Lord, let us see the Father, and then we
shall be satisfied”, Jesus retorted, “To have seen me is to have see the
Father, so how can you say, ‘Let us see the Father? Do you not believe
that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?”
The corollary of
this claim of Jesus’ identification with the Father therefore
means that if we were to come to the Father, the source of life, then we must
come through Jesus, since to come to Jesus is to come to the Father. From
this basis, we can appreciate why the Church says that Christ is the only
mediator to the Father. If Christ were the personal presence of the
Father, then if we want to come to know God, it can only be through
Jesus. Any other way would therefore be deemed inadequate and incomplete
even if one could come to God.
How then is
Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life, the fullness of God’s revelation?
To say that Jesus is the Way, we mean that we can come to the
Father if we only follow Jesus who has not only shown us the way but also
walked the way. Jesus has walked the talk. What is this way if not
the way of passion, death and resurrection? Accordingly, if we want to
have a place at the Father’s house, then we, too, must travel the same route by
dying to ourselves, especially our sins.
Secondly, to
proclaim Jesus as the Truth, we are not speaking of Truth in the
abstract and philosophical sense. Truth, in John’s gospel, is an event, not so
much an idea. For what do we mean when we say something is true?
Something is true not only when it is logically correct and therefore accepted
by the intellect or our reason, but it must also be real through our
experience.
Thirdly, to
believe that Jesus is the Life, we are simply saying that to find
life, we only need to live the kind of life Jesus lived. When we say that
Jesus is the God-man, we are not saying that only certain parts of His life
manifested the life of God. The incarnation of Jesus means that God was
made present in everything about Jesus, in the way He lived and talked, the way
He felt, thought and expressed Himself. Hence, if we live, act, think and
feel like Jesus, we will also find the fullness of life in whatever we do in
our daily life. Everything that happens to us, be it success or failure, joy or
sorrow, would be the medium by which we live our life to the fullest.
Thus, in following
Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life, we will arrive at the Father’s
house. This is what Jesus promised us when He said, “There are many
rooms in my Father’s house; if there were not, I should have told you. I am
going now to prepare a place for you, and after I have gone and prepared you a
place, I shall return to take you with me; so that where I am you may be
too.” But lest we are mistaken, the Father’s house is not a place which
we call heaven in another part of the universe. When Jesus told the
disciples, “you know the way to the place where I am going”, He was referring
to His return to the Father where He had always belonged. He was not so
much going to another place but to be one with the Father. In Jesus’ return to
the Father at the Ascension, He sits at His right hand in glory.
So where
is the Father’s house for us? It is in Jesus, since the Father is
identified in Jesus. From this perspective, we can understand why there are
many rooms in the Father’s house, for we are all living in Jesus rather than a
place. But how can we be in Jesus? It is not possible unless Jesus
lives in us. This is only possible if He comes again in the Holy
Spirit. Hence, He told His disciples not to worry or be troubled because
He was going away. For His going was in order that He might come in a new
way in the Holy Spirit. One could say that with His return at Pentecost
in the Holy Spirit, He has brought heaven to us by dwelling in our
bodies. Insofar as we allow His Spirit to reign in our hearts, we partake
of the heavenly life.
Indeed, it is through
the Holy Spirit that we live in Jesus and Jesus lives in us. So
when we follow the way of Jesus, Jesus is identified with us and He lives in us
and we in Him. With Jesus living in us, we can now verify for ourselves
the reality of the Risen Lord because He continues to work in our lives today.
We know for
certain that Jesus is Lord not only because the early Christians said so, or the Church
says so, but because we are now His witnesses. Hence, when we claim that
Jesus is Lord and God, and therefore the Saviour of the world, we are not
merely making a claim but we are testifying from our own experience, which is
consonant with reason, that the man whom the world crucified and raised is
truly Lord of all.
Written by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of
Singapore © All Rights Reserved
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