John 14:1-14
Jesus Comforts His Disciples
1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Jesus the Way to God our Father
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
Like the apostles learning from Jesus on the Road to Emmaus, Jesus is everyday Teacher for us...He is our travelling Companion in all of life...He is the One who quenches our thirst and satisfies our dreams...He makes us feel the different beauties of life that we are attracted to, that leads to an abundant life...Jesus gives us both faith and reason to learn about the Truth of the Father and Son...Let us seek the Truth, find the Truth, and get to know the Truth, because Jesus says He is the Truth...And His Way of Truth is a Way of Life that gets us to see the Eternal Father...And when we know our Father and His Son, we better know ourselves...Jesus teaches us about love and freedom and about morality...Without love and morality the world would be a terrible place to live...So freedom exists for the sake of love...Today is no time to be ashamed of Jesus...The world needs Him now as much as ever...We see evil and immorality, it seems like on a daily basis...We need Jesus to help us advance our moral values today...And He teaches us that we relate to Him by loving God and loving neighbor...No one comes to the Father except through the Father except though Jesus...Jesus and His Father are One, and if you have seen Jesus, you have seen the Father...The Father is in Jesus and He is in the Father...So do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid...Trust in God, but trust also in Jesus...
Pope John Paul XIII quoted these things for us to help us in our journey through life...Pope John Paul XIII said: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of Truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the Truth- in a word, to know Himself- so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of Truth about themselves.”...“Learning to think rigorously, so as to act rightly and to serve humanity better.”...
“True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality...It is a caricature of freedom to claim that people are free to organize their lives with no reference to moral values, and to say that society does not have to ensure the protection and advancement of ethical values...Such an attitude is destructive of freedom and peace.”...“Limitation of one's freedom might seem to be something negative and unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing...Freedom exists for the sake of love.”...“Take away from love the fullness of self surrender, the completeness of personal commitment, and what remains will be a total denial and negation of it.”...“Love consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom - it is a giving of the self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one's freedom on behalf of another.”...“A person is an entity of a sort to which the only proper and adequate way to relate is love.”...
“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle...It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”...“The Gospel lives in conversation with culture, and if the Church holds back from the culture, the Gospel itself falls silent...Therefore, we must be fearless in crossing the threshold of the communication and information revolution now taking place.”....“ This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel...It is the time to preach it from the rooftops...Do not be afraid to break out of comfortable and routine modes of living in order to take up the challenge of making Christ known in the modern metropolis. ”...“We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son Jesus.”...“Ask yourselves, young people, about the love of Christ...Acknowledge His voice resounding in the temple of your heart...Return His bright and penetrating glance which opens the paths of your life to the horizons of the Church’s mission...It is a taxing mission, today more than ever, to teach men the Truth about themselves, about their end, their destiny, and to show faithful souls the unspeakable riches of the love of Christ...Do not be afraid of the radicalness of His demands, because Jesus, who LOVED us first, is prepared to give Himself to you, as well as asking of you...If He asks much of you, it is because He knows you can give much.”...“The true Christian can nurture a trustful optimism, because he is certain of not walking alone...In sending us Jesus, the Eternal Son made Man, God has drawn near to each of us...In Christ He has become our travelling companion.”...