Friday May 12
The farewell of Jesus to his disciples on his last day on earth is exciting. His disciples are sad, knowing that something traumatic is going to happen but Christ points to a bright horizon, which can conquer death and achieve eternal life, infinitely divine. To doubting Thomas, he responded by declaring himself the way, the truth and the life. Christ is the only and most direct way to reach the truth, that is, the revelation of the divine mystery in the history of salvation. Christ opens the path of life, of intimacy and full communion with God.
Alternative
To the insider, the outsider is the opposite in every way: he is the heretic, the enemy, the betrayer. Jesus was an outsider. He went after “the weak, the sick, the wounded, the strayed, the lost” (see Ezk 34). It was because he praised the outsider that his own villagers tried to throw him over a cliff (Lk 4:29). He praised the faith of a pagan (Mt 8:10). He healed the heretic leper and said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well” (Lk 17:19). He made such a heretic (“the good Samaritan”) the hero of his story (Lk 10:30).
One of the greatest tragedies of the Church is that it became, in many periods of history, a power-structure, a caste of insiders. It is in constant danger of defining itself in this way. “Outside the Church there is no salvation,” was once a theological axiom. How did people of that time read today’s passage, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms”? No doubt it was put safely out of harm’s way into the next world: as referring to heaven, not earth. (Scholars, ancient and modern, have much to add to that interpretation.) Even so, there still remains the saying of Jesus, “I am the way….” Jesus is the way: the Jesus who told a story about a lost sheep….
Alternative
Peter thinks Jesus should be doing something ‘nobler’ than washing their feet. Thomas complains that they don’t know where he is going – implying that they need a better view of the destination. Philip wants a vision: “Show us the Father, and that will be enough” (tomorrow’s reading). All are unsatisfied with what they actually have; they want something ‘higher’. Jesus points to what they already have: “Thomas...I am the way; Philip...whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” About the same time that John’s Gospel: was being written, Clement of Rome was writing to the Corinthians, “There was a time when you were... satisfied with the provisions of Christ.” (Evidently that day was gone!) Satisfied with what Christ provides for the journey. Now they were looking for something more. Disciples of every age – including our own – seem to want more than is given. We look for “signs and wonders,” bleeding statues, ‘messages.’