Only One Life but Many Services Gospel: John 14:1-12
Fr. Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF Claretian Missions
“In my Father’s house there are many rooms… Yet you know the way where I am going” (vv. 2-4). Jesus means to say that he has to go through a difficult “path.” He adds that his disciples would have to know very well that “way” because he often spoke of it.
Thomas replies on behalf of all, “We do not know this ‘way’ and we cannot guess where you want to go.” Jesus explains: he himself will be the first to run the “way.” Once his mission is accomplished, he will be back and will take the disciples with him. He will infuse them with his courage and strength, so they will be enabled to follow in his footsteps.
The “way” is the difficult path toward Easter. It demands the sacrifice of life. Jesus talked about it many times, but the disciples were always reluctant to understand. When he insisted on the “gift of life,” they preferred to be distracted, thinking about something else.
In this perspective, the question about “the seats in the Father’s house” becomes clear. Whoever has agreed to follow the “way” traveled by Jesus finds themselves immediately in the kingdom of God, in the Father’s house! This house is not paradise but the Christian community. There are many places, that is, many services, many tasks to be performed in it. The “many places” are nothing but the “various ministries,” the different situations in which everyone is required to make available to the brethren one’s own capacity, the many gifts received from God.
The second part of today’s Gospel is centered on the question of Philip, “Lord, show us the Father and that is enough.” Philip seems to be an interpreter of this intimate yearning of the human heart. He knows that “no one has ever seen God” (Jn 1:18), because “he lives in unapproachable light and whom no one has seen or can see” (1 Tim 6:16); but also recalls the bliss reserved for the pure of heart, “for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8), and thinks that Jesus can satisfy his secret aspiration. He presents such a demand that seems to echo those expressed by Moses and the psalmists.
In his response, Jesus shows the way to see God. One needs to look at him. He is the human face that God has taken to manifest himself, to establish a relationship of intimacy, friendship, communion of life with people. He is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), “the radiance of God’s glory and bears the stamp of God’s hidden being” (Heb 1:3).
To know the Father, there is no need to make any arguments or reasoning. It is not worth it to get lost in inadequate philosophical investigations. It is sufficient to contemplate Jesus, to observe what he does, says, teaches, how he behaves, loves, whom he prefers, attends to, caresses, and from whom he lets himself be caressed, with whom he dines, he chooses, defends… because the Father does so. The works that Jesus fulfill are those of the Father (v. 10).
“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus affirms (v. 9). It is a gaze of faith that is required, a look that goes beyond appearances, beyond the purely material datum, a look that captures the revelation of God in the works of Jesus. This seeing is equivalent to believing.
The good shepherd is an image so engraved in the Christian literature that we have forgotten that it is a metaphor. It must have been the same for the Jews as well, since all the celebrated Jewish ancestors were shepherds. Abraham, Moses, Jacob, David and all in that line. Going beyond the metaphor, we need to meditate on the real me, the sheep and the good shepherd, Jesus Christ, the relationship of every Christian with one’s master.
The meek and gullible nature of the sheep make them susceptible to be led astray. Look at that statement from prophet Jeremiah (11:19), like a trusting lamb, I was lead to the slaughter. That is where, Jesus talks about being the good shepherd who will protect the sheep at the cost of his own life. A shepherd, knowing all too well his sheep sings a song of the sheep in Pslam 23. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, I couldn’t care less, since my shepherd is taking care of me. This sheep knows the master very well and leaves all his cares unto him. Jesus, instead aware of the danger of evil shepherds warn us to be more discerning like snakes and innocent like doves. Discernment of the voices, that is what the Lord wants of us.
About discernment Viktor Frankl wrote in his Man’s Search for Meaning, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” I have been captivated by this sentence over decades and particularly in the context of the relationship between the shepherd and the sheep. The sheep, we the humans, get used to the master’s call through familiarity to his voice. The animals get conditioned to the tone and frequency of the shepherd. We have a choice beyond the conditioning. There is a space between our response and the master’s call.
“My sheep hear my voice.” thus begins the gospel today. This little sentence hides a lot more than it expresses. First of all, it indicates the existence of other voices (of other shepherds) and other sheep that do not belong to the good shepherd. The Good Shepherd seems to speak from the experience of evil or bad shepherds who sell or kill their sheep or leave to the cruelty of preying animals.
I often wonder, how do we get used to the voice of the shepherd? How do we hear the voice of the Lord, regularly? I listened to the Lord through a process of discernment based on the values that I have picked from the scriptures and the Church. There was a period of growth in me in which I tried to cancel the space between the voice and response. That was by choosing a passage from the Bible in random and trying to find a personal message out of it. This practice like taking a lottery ticket is practiced around the world. I do not use this method anymore since, it cancels out the personal process of the discernment. The random usage of the word of God is more likely to satisfy human curiosity. Even the evil tempted the Lord using scripture quotes. Since that realization came, I have started a process of discernment to listen to the voice of the Lord in the scriptures, based on the global values that the scripture gives us.
The good shepherd stands out in the way he gives a choice to the sheep to listen to his voice and he does not force his voice over the sheep. But, he does not allow anyone to get lost either. When the sheep wanders and gets lost, he goes in search of the lost sheep and returns carrying him on his shoulders.
Every call demands a response from us, a discerned response. When we get used to that discernment, we are able to recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd with accuracy.
Recognize him in the Eucharist! Gospel: Luke 24:13-35
Fr. Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF Claretian Missionaries
The story of the disciples of Emmaus is one of the most beautiful pages of the Gospels. The text could be narrated very superficially unless we notice some indices that orient us toward a less superficial reading. How could one not notice, for example, that the sentence: “When he was at table with them, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them” explicitly recalls the celebration of the Eucharist? And, before sitting down at the table, the mysterious traveler also presides over a solemn liturgy of the Word with its three readings (“and beginning with Moses and all the prophets he explained to them in all the Scriptures…” [v. 27]) and his good sermon (“Were not our hearts burning within us when he opened to us the Scriptures…” [v. 32]). In short, he officiated a full-blown liturgy. The two disciples are sad: they have seen the collapse of their dreams, the failure of their plans. They expected a glorious Messiah, a mighty and triumphant king but found themselves in front of a loser. The rabbis taught that the Messiah would have lived a thousand years, Jesus instead was dead.
This situation of desperation of the Emmaus disciples, resembles that of the communities of Luke. They are persecuted, victims of abuse. They see the triumph of the works of death; the wicked have the better over the pure in heart. They find themselves in the same state of mind as the disciples of Emmaus. They also stop with sad faces.
It is our story. We too find ourselves sometimes in the same state of mind. It happens when we have to admit that cunning prevails over honesty; when we are forced to acknowledge a lie as the official truth, imposed by those in power; when we see the prophets silenced or killed. We stop, sad. How to get out of this desperate situation?
The Emmaus disciples made mistaken responses to the crisis. First of all, they left the community whose members continued to search for an answer to what had happened. They did not verify if the women’s experience could be enlightening for them.
Many Christians were behaving as such in the time of Luke: in front of difficulties and persecutions, some abandoned their communities; others, almost on principle, refused the answers that came from faith. They did not even verify if they could have logic and sense.
The Emmaus disciples did not have the slightest doubt that their ideas about the triumphant messiah could be wrong. They were stubbornly clinging to tradition, to what they had been taught. They were impervious to the surprises and novelties of God.
Jesus does not abandon the people who choose the roads that lead to sadness. He becomes their companion in the journey.
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