THE REALITY OF THE PROMISE

FRIDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF EASTER

Act 13:26-33; Ps 2:6-11; Jn 14:1-6

I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life

Saint Paul’s speech to the congregation was an attempt to demonstrate to them the privileged time and gift they have received from God our Father. Arguing that what Abraham and other patriarchs received as the promise is now the reality of salvation God has offered all through the Gospel. “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.” The Good News is about the death of the Son of Man at the hands of his people, but it is to take care of our sins. We all participated in the killing of the Just One through our sins. God the Father wills that the innocent death of his Son in his human nature should ransom us from our sins. The resurrection of the Son of Man proves our redemption from death as the consequence of our sins. “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.”

The Gospel Saint Paul offered them was what God promised Abraham, David, and their other ancestors. God has opened a way for us to become his children through faith in the resurrection of the Son of Man. “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.’” According to Paul, the resurrection demonstrates the divinity of the Son of Man, whose death at our hands demonstrated his human nature. Through this presentation, Paul gave them the News that is supposed to transform their understanding of God, man, and religion. Thus, the Good News offers us the way of gaining adoption in God, such that the words of the psalmist do not just apply to the Son of Man at his resurrection, but to us also at our profession of faith in the resurrection, when we gain heavenly life through spiritual rebirth in baptism effected in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We gained heavenly life through faith in Jesus Christ and become one with him through the Holy Spirit he shares with us, such that everything said of him also applies to us, his members.

The deep understanding gained in this consideration throws much light on the admonitions of our Lord to his disciples in the Gospel. “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.” Here, the Lord speaks to his disciples as his brothers, with whom he shares our human nature. By his participation in our nature, he is our brother, but by his purity in our nature, he is our Shepherd, for he knows what is suitable to our nature as our essential good and end. Further, as the Eternal Word of God, filled with divine light in his essence as God, he is our heavenly pasture. Finally, he is the ultimate good as consubstantial with the Father and our eternal life and fulfilment. He ceased to be visible that he may better prepare us to become what he is after his resurrection. These are the significations of his words. “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.” Prompted by Thomas’ question, he clarified that his departure is not of time and space, but ceasing to give himself to our sense, but accessible to our faith, reason, and will. His words imply these. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” Our faith accesses the humanity of the risen Lord, our reasons access the Truth, and our wills enjoy life through the love of the Holy Spirit.

Let us pray: O God, author of our freedom and of our salvation, listen to the voice of our pleading and grant that those you have redeemed by the shedding of your Son’s Blood may have life through you and, under your protection, rejoice forever unharmed. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.