for May 8
Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter

I often struggle with the fourth gospel. In the hands of the evangelist we call John, Jesus seems aloof and given to long, formal speeches. Today’s passage, however, is an amazing exception. It is tender and intimate, right from its very first words: let not your hearts be troubled.

That is a surprising thing to say at this point in the fourth gospel. In the previous chapter (which we read a few verses of yesterday), Jesus washed his disciples’ feet and predicted Judas’s betrayal and Peter’s denial. Today’s gospel comes at the beginning of Jesus’ three-chapter long farewell speech to his disciples. It is composed of material drawn together by the evangelist as a meditation on the meaning of Jesus’s ministry and of his death and resurrection. It is a pause, a moment in-between, what has happened and what is to come.

Could the evangelist have known, I wonder, about the cooking and cleaning, the making ready for new routines, that was actually involved in the first century version of preparing a place to welcome someone into your home? 

The evangelist certainly knew that for Jesus ‘to go and come back again’ meant that Jesus would be crucified and pass from death to life. And the evangelist wants to be sure we, too, know why: these things would happen so that Jesus could ‘take us to himself.’ The words themselves sound like a loving embrace: all of what Jesus has done in his ministry and will do through his passion, is for us. 

Today’s gospel is a reminder, an invitation, to dwell for a time in that sure knowledge.

To dwell in the Father’s house conjures up a sense of safety and security. It recalls the fulfillment of the covenant made to Abraham and his descendants forever. It is to be at home in a place created and cared for by God.

How good it is to hear these words right now! We are also in-between, paused between life before and preparing for the ‘new normal.’ We are in a time of dwelling much on our fears and worries and griefs. Perhaps, even, our actual dwelling places are filled with loneliness or with people who are getting on our nerves or some ever-changing mix of both. But we are promised a far different dwelling place: Let not your hearts be troubled. . .I will take you (yes, you) to myself. This is the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Today and always.
—BJ Brown

Today’s readings are found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.