“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Though this may have been addressed to Thomas, it was equally intended for us. And what an important lesson it is. Many people have strange notions of God. It is an easy step from knowing God to be almighty to assume that he is angry with us when we sin and that we will one day have to sit at his judgment seat where everything we have ever done will be dredged up and a just verdict rendered. Jesus reveals to us a Father who is not cold and hard and implacably just but one who is wise, understanding, tender, and most gracious. His only desire is to see us grow up worthily.

Christ’s whole purpose for coming into the world is to show us how much God loves us. This is not simply some intellectual knowledge; it is to live with God and experience his merciful love firsthand. Thus we do not believe this only by faith, but by personal experience of God in our lives. Jesus is the only way to the Father because, through him, we can attain that life in and with God so that we can come to know God as he really is.

“I am the only way that leads to God,” Jesus tells us. That knowledge and experience will come through the Eucharist for most of us. In the Liturgy of the Word, we have the life and teaching of Jesus to reinforce everything that this means. There is much to reflect on and pray over here. And in sharing at the Table of Christ’s flesh, we experience deep within what it means to be a sister or brother of Jesus, a much-loved child of God.

Let Us Pray:

O loving Jesus, help me to appreciate more and more what you reveal to us repeatedly in the gospels. May I come to embody these qualities in my own life.