The Way, The Truth, and The Life
Fifth Sunday of Easter (A) – Lectionary 52
Jesus declares himself to be the way, the truth, and the life. These words speak to the very heart of our faith and remind us of the exclusive and unique role Jesus plays in our lives.
Jesus himself teaches us that he is the way, just as last week he taught that he is the door. There is no other path to God. He is the one mediator who facilitates our entry into the presence of God. This is a clear and unambiguous statement from Jesus, one that we must take seriously, even if it makes us uncomfortable in these pluralistic times.
But Jesus is not simply a metaphor or a spiritual concept. God is stubbornly incarnational, and Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love and mercy in the world. Through Jesus, we encounter God in a real and tangible way.
That stubborn incarnationality did not end with the Ascension – just as Jesus was present to his disciples in the flesh, he is also present in the Church. The Church is not simply a human institution, but the living body of Christ. The Church is the way to God because it is the body of Christ himself. We cannot separate the head from the body, just as we cannot separate Christ from the Church.
This is a profound and mysterious truth, one that we must contemplate and embrace if we wish to understand the fullness of our faith. As the Council teaches us, all salvation comes from Christ through the Church. We enter into the Church through baptism, and it is through the Church that we are saved.
Of course, this does not mean that those who do not know Christ or his Church are excluded from salvation. As the Council also reminds us, those who seek God with a sincere heart and try to do his will can achieve eternal salvation. God can lead those who are ignorant of the Gospel to faith, but the Church still has the obligation to evangelize all people.
This is why the Church exists: to bring the good news to the world that there is a way to God. Our mission as Christians is ultimately grounded in the love of the Most Holy Trinity, and our goal is to bring people into communion with the Father and the Son in their Spirit of love.
Moving on to the second section, we see that Jesus is not only the Way but also the Truth.
Jesus is the truth we should follow. He is the source of truth and knowledge about God and the world we live in. Jesus reveals God to us. Jesus is the perfect image of God, and by looking at Jesus, we see who God is. Jesus reveals to us the love and mercy of God, and Jesus reveals to us that humanity is the subject of God’s love. Thus, Jesus reveals the truth about ourselves, too.
We are God’s loved and chosen people. We are chosen people, a royal priesthood of all believers. The Catechism affirms that Christ, our high priest and unique mediator, has made the Church “a kingdom, priests for his God and Father.” The whole community of believers is, as such, priestly.
We exercise our baptismal priesthood through our participation in Christ’s mission as priest, prophet, and king. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, we are consecrated to be a holy priesthood. We are also living stones in the temple of God. The temple of God is where God dwells, and since the Church is the Body of Christ, God dwells in the Church.
We are both assembled into the temple of God and ministering as priests in that same temple. But the Hebrew tradition sees the whole universe or cosmos as the temple of God. Thus, in some way, the Church is like the holiest of holies in the Jewish temple, giving light to the entire temple that is the cosmos.
This brings us to the third section: Jesus is the way to God, and the truth we should follow. But where do we follow him?
We follow him to Life. Jesus is the Life – because in him is life and that life is the light of men.
Jesus said “Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.”
The word for “know” here is ginosko, which is used to indicate a personal, first-hand intimate acquaintance. It is to know experientially. It is used, for example, when the Blessed Virgin responds to the news of the Incarnation by saying “How will this be since I do not know man?”
It is not enough to know about God, or to know about Jesus, or to hold truth in our heads. Life means an intimate, personal “knowing.”
Last week at adult education, Karen brought up the idea that not only do we need to know God, but God needs to know us. I stumbled over this at first, because God is omniscient – all knowing – so how could God not know us? But Jesus himself reports that some who said “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name” will hear in response – “I never knew you; depart from me.” They clearly know about God, and God clearly knows about them but… they do not know one another. Will we let God know us intimately?
If we have this life, we are not alone. Indeed, as The Trinity, God is never alone. Instead, we are like living stones, assembled into a spiritual house. Our call is to evangelize – to spread the good news about this Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life.
How do we abide in life? How do we live it? How are we assembled into the Body of Christ? Each of us are called to evangelize in three ways: word, worship and service.
In today’s first reading, we hear about the calling of the first Deacons, in which the community calls and the apostles ordain individuals for the service of Charity so that the ministerial priests can focus upon the spiritual life. As an Apostle, our Bishop is called to service in a particular way. As a priest, Father is called to service in a particular way. As a Deacon, I am called to word, worship, and charitable service in a particular way. And just as we all participate in the priesthood in some way, we all participate in diakonia, or service, along with word and worship.
Consider the Word. I was very thankful this week for Pope Benedict XVI’s meditation on soil and seed. Soil provides organic material for the seed. Life is in the seed, not the soil. Soil alone, say on Mars, without even microbial life, is sterile. It is fruitless. Jesus is the word in his person and in the scriptures, and in the church. The word is the seed. We are the soil. When the Bible says that the word or the seed bears fruit, it means that the seed sinks into the earth, assimilates the earth’s energies, and changes those energies into itself. Just like the word became flesh in the womb of Mary, and assimilated her humanity into himself, we can also become fruitful soil for God’s word. We provide the organic elements in which life can grow and mature, by giving ourselves to the Word, and becoming that word. Then, we, the church, become the word so that new life can grow in the world.
Secondly, we are called to worship. When we come to church, we are not spectators, we are not an audience. We are worshippers. We unite ourselves tangibly and spiritually with the one sacrifice of Christ through the offering. We ask that God accept the offering to which we have united ourselves, saying “may the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of His name, for our good and the good of all His holy Church.” This is our response to Father’s prayer, in which he says, “Pray, my sisters and brothers, that your sacrifice and mine may be acceptable to God the Almighty Father.”
We are not an audience. We do not simply “go” to mass. We do not simply congregate or show up on Sunday. We assist at mass. We are assembled – praying together in this house made of living stones.
We are loved, and we matter. We have a role and a place. The Church is incomplete in some ways without us. We are living stones in the Body of Christ, the Church, and…there are stones missing. They are physically visible to us here as empty seats. We exist to evangelize. That is, we are called to make disciples. It starts in our hearts, as we allow the Word to take root and bear fruit. It continues in our family, extending to our neighbors and the whole world.
Allow the word to take root and bear fruit in your heart and your life, and your family. Then, explicitly and directly invite your family and friends to come to or return to church. We are incomplete without them.
So then, Word, Worship, and that brings us to charity, social justice, and service.
The works of mercy are charitable actions by which we come to the aid of our neighbor in his spiritual and bodily necessities. Instructing, advising, consoling, comforting are spiritual works of mercy, as are forgiving and bearing wrongs patiently. The corporal works of mercy consist especially of feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and burying the dead.
Corporal works of mercy are the primary means by which the Church opens the door to evangelization. Loving our neighbor is an end in itself, but as we see in the calling of the first Deacons, it is secondary to and ordered towards the ministry of the Word and Worship. The Church does not exist to be just another non-profit, as Pope Francis so often says. We exist to evangelize. But, we love our neighbors, so we serve them, with no strings attached, and we are ourselves blessed as we perform works of mercy.
Brothers and sisters, we are loved, chosen, and assembled into a spiritual house. But some of us are missing, and need to be evangelized, or re-evangelized. We are called to evangelize through word, worship, and service. We must let the Word take root in our hearts, worship God tangibly and spiritually, and be charitable in our actions towards others. Let’s be bold in finding the stones that have not yet found their place, or have been displaced, and help them find their way to their place in God’s holy temple not made with human hands. Let’s all live our lives as a reflection of Jesus, who is the way to the Father, the truth to follow, and the life in which we should abide.
