Patrick Comerford
Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (20 April 2025) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (8 June 2025), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV, 11 May 2025), and the calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers the life and witness of Caroline Chisholm (1808-1877), Social Reformer.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
John 14: 1-6 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 1 ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ 5 Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ 6 Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’
Today’s Reflection:
Today’s short Gospel reading provided in the Lectionary at the Eucharist includes the sixth of the seven ‘I AM’ sayings in Saint John’s Gospel: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life [John 14: 6]; and it also includes one the many memorable sayings in this Gospel: ‘In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places . If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?’ John 14: 2).
This chapter (John 14) includes questions from three of the disciple and three answers from Jesus, which we hear over the course of three days, today, tomorrow and on Monday:
• ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ (Thomas, John 14: 5)
• ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied’ (Philip, John 14: 8)
• ‘Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?’ (Judas Thaddeus, John 14: 22)
These are also the questions and problems within the communities and churches gathered around Saint John in Ephesus and in Asia Minor. The answers Jesus gives to these three questions are like a mirror in which those communities find a response to their doubts and difficulties.
Jesus is preparing his friends to separate themselves and reveals to them his friendship, communicating to them security and support.
Today’s reading begins with an exhortation: ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled’ (verse 1). And immediately Jesus adds: ‘In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places’ (verse 2).
This continuing use of encouraging words in the face of troubles and differences is a sign of many disagreements within those communities, each claiming to have the right approach to living out the faith and believing the others are living in error.
Jesus says: ‘In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places’ It is not necessary that everybody thinks the same way. The important thing is that all accept Jesus, the revelation of the Father, and that out of love for him, we show understanding, service and love. Love and service help the diverse communities to become a Church of brothers and sisters.
In this farewell address, Jesus says he is going to prepare a place and that afterwards he will return to take us with him to the Father’s house (John 14:3-4) . He wants us to be with him forever. The return he speaks about is the coming of the Spirit, who he sends and who acts in us (John 14: 16-17, 26; 16: 13-14).
The Johannine community feared a delay in this future return and Saint John’s Gospel is filled with reminders of the Spirit. Jesus ends by saying: ‘you know the way to the place where I am going’ (verse 4).
Thomas asks which is the way: ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ (verse 5). Jesus answers: ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’ (verse 6).
Without the way we cannot go.
Without the truth we cannot make good choices.
Without life, there is only death.
Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Today’s Prayers (Friday 16 May 2025):
‘Health and Hope in the Manyoni District’ provides the theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from Dr Frank Mathew Haji of the Integrated Child Health and End Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV Programme in Tanzania.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 16 May 2025) invites us to pray:
Lord, we seek the availability of more partners and funds to support the scaling up of this programme in other areas of need within.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life:
raise us, who trust in him,
from the death of sin to the life of righteousness,
that we may seek those things which are above,
where he reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Merciful Father,
you gave your Son Jesus Christ to be the good shepherd,
and in his love for us to lay down his life and rise again:
keep us always under his protection,
and give us grace to follow in his steps;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Risen Christ,
faithful shepherd of your Father’s sheep:
teach us to hear your voice
and to follow your command,
that all your people may be gathered into one flock,
to the glory of God the Father.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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