HOMILY Jesus - The Way, the Truth and the Life Father Larry Richards Moderator, Bread of Life Community Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter Cycle A Jesus - The Way, the Truth and the Life READINGS: Acts 6: 1-7; 1 Peter 2 :4-9; John 14: 1-12 Today, as we come before Jesus, I want you to open your Bibles to today s reading, John 14:1 ff. Here we find Jesus getting ready to leave His Apostles. Their hearts were troubled. In John 14:1 He says, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Have faith in God and faith in Me." That s a powerful verse for me. It s not what I m going to preach on today, except for the reality of it. Years ago, I was having a very bad day, so at 1:00 a.m. I threw myself before Christ in the Blessed Sacrament down at St. Luke s. I just lay there and said, "Lord, my heart is a mess. You ve got to help me." I opened up His Word, and as I looked down, I came to that passage - "Let not your heart be troubled. Have faith in God and faith in Me." At THAT MOMENT, it was like God just completely re-did my heart. It shows the POWER of God s Word. I was sad, I was depressed, I was a mess, and I opened the Word, and one word out of God s mouth TRANSFORMED me, and transformed that night. You see, there s POWER in the Word of God. It s not just some story that we read, and "Oh, yeah, I ve got my Bible, isn t that nice?" If you commit yourself to spending time with the Word, you will be transformed, you will be given life - a tremendous life, a glorious life! Your life will be changed supernaturally - Jesus will enter in and re-organize your life according to His Word. I just want to ask you to commit yourself to that - to spending time with Him. I know most of you do that, but I want to encourage it for the others, too.
Now, I want to spend time on verse 6 of Chapter 14. "Jesus told him, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." Let s dissect that today. First of all, Jesus says, "I am the Way." He is the way to God. Teresa of Avila once said, "All the way to Heaven is Heaven, because Jesus said, I am the Way." The pattern we have of Jesus life is not just an example that we follow so that one day we can enter into Heaven. When Jesus says, "I am the Way" that means that we enter into this relationship with Christ, and we go to Heaven inside of Him. It is this intimate relationship with Christ. He s not just an example for how we live our life. If you do that, you can easily become a Pharisee. The Pharisees took the commandments and they took all the revelation of God, and they said, "Ok, this is how I m going to live my life." They achieved their salvation (they thought), because they just followed the pattern laid out for them. Being a Christian is not about following a pattern. Being a Christian is about entering into intimacy with the Lord. Intimacy. He is the Way. Not "He s going to show us the way." HE IS THE WAY. So, when we enter into this intimacy with Jesus, we already start experiencing Heaven inside of us - because He is inside of us. We have to start asking, "Do I live my life as if Heaven is inside of me? Do I have a joyful life? Am I transformed by Christ? Do people look at me and see someone who walks more in Purgatory or Hell? Or, do they see me as a person who lives in Heaven? Do people like to be around me because I m joy-filled? Heaven is within you. Jesus is here, so all the way to Heaven is Heaven, because we are in Christ Jesus. It s about Him and that intimacy with Him. First, I want us to reflect on this. Is He truly the Way? Have I entered into Him, or have I entered into following His example? There s a big difference there. It s about Him. The second thing He talks about is, "I am the Truth." Truth is what it s about. St. John says that there are two things we have to deal with as a Church. The first thing is love, the second thing is truth. You need both. You can t have love without truth. He said, "I am the Truth." We need to follow what s true. When people talk to me about leaving the Catholic Church, or going to some other Church, or say they go to church because it makes them feel good, or that they are leaving a place because they are not being fed, I always look at them and say, "What is true?" Don t go for feelings, because feelings are deceptive. You might go to a place and think, "Oh, this is great because everyone loves me and that s so good." But, is it TRUE? You may join a cult and everyone may love you and it may feel good for you, but is what they teach true??? Again and again, I say, "Look at truth." This weekend I have 26 couples for an Engagement Encounter Retreat. When they came in on Friday, they were "Pagans." I told them that. Half of them are living together, half of them aren t Catholic, and they ve got to deal with Father! We have had a ball! Last night
when I heard confessions, I think every person went to confession - ten years, twenty years, seven years, they haven t been to confession. For the first time, they are coming into intimacy with Christ. Five Protestants even came to Confession - so touched were they, wanting to be in this relationship with Christ. They were talking about what is true. They were raising their hands during the question and answer session - "Father, how can I become a Catholic?" Because it s true! That s all I kept hitting them with. This is true - it isn t a feeling. What s TRUE, and what ISN'T TRUE?? Jesus Christ is either in the Blessed Sacrament, or He s not. It s not your opinion, it s not whether I feel like it or not. If today Almighty God humbles Himself to become Bread, and you come up and say "This is My Body," that s either true, or we are committing idolatry. We are worshipping bread. There is no in-between - "well, you can believe that, I don t believe it." No, truth is truth. It s either true or it s not. Jesus Christ is God or He s not - He s just a nice person. So, when it comes to the reality that Christ is the Truth, He says that. Go to Chapter 18 of John. Jesus is going before Pilate, and He re-affirms this. In Chapter 18:37 it says, "At this Pilate said to Him, so then, you are a King. Jesus replied, It is you who say that I am a King. The reason I was born, the reason I came into the world is to testify to the truth. Anyone committed to the truth will hear My Voice." So, do you hear the Voice of God? Are you that intimate with Him that you hear His Voice? Are you in search of Truth, or you in search of a feeling? Are you in search of a feel-good relationship, or are you in search of what is true? Because, ultimately, the only thing that matters is what is true. I often have said that I am committed to truth. If someone could prove to me tomorrow that Buddha was God, I d become a Buddhist. But, I promise you, he s not! Christ is God. Each of us has to be committed to the truth. Truth will always lead you to God. If it s scientific truth, it will lead you to God. If it s existential truth, it will lead you to God. If it s psychological truth, it will lead you to God. All truth leads us to God, because God is true, and He is truth. That s a basic philosophical concept that Aquinas and everyone else was very strong on. Are you committed to truth? Finally, we look to the very last line, where He says, "I am the Life." We talked a lot about life on Easter Sunday. But, Life is an abundant life. "I ve come that you might have life, and have it to the full." Again, as I was working with the Engagement Encounter retreat, we have one part where everyone in the room gets a lighted candle in the darkness. Each couple has a candle with them. We talk about this light being Christ. I say to them, "Think about the people you have hurt. Now, blow out the candles. This is your life without Christ. It s dark. It s death. It s in a tomb." When we are in Jesus Christ, we have Life. People should see us, and people should see that we re alive. One person came to me
this weekend (I had never met her before), and she said, "Father, you ve got so much life inside of you. Where d you get it?" What do you think I said? "JESUS - He s the One who gives me life!" Can people come up to you and say, "Boy, you have so much life. Where d you get it?" "Jesus." You can tell that Jesus is alive, because all they re doing is looking at you and thinking, "There s something different about that person." They are fully alive! That is what God calls us to! Think about how you wake up in the morning. Do you wake up in the morning and say, "Good morning, God!!" Or, "Good God, morning." How do you wake up? Are you fully alive? Do you sit there and rejoice in the reality of Christ? Are you alive in Jesus? Now, notice, life comes from Him, not from you. I am not a morning person, just ask the people who come to pray with me every morning. I grunt at them when they come in the door. "Good morning, Father" they ll say. "Hi Father!" I haven t had my coffee yet and I m like grrrr...but the life isn t from me you see, it s from Christ. When I kneel down, and I start saying the rosary with the group, then I can feel the life come back, because I am plugged in to He who is Life. In me, I d rather stay in bed and be dead. In Christ, it s life. It s kind of like drinking that first cup of coffee in the morning, when you can feel the life come back into your body. When you pray in the morning it s like, "Ok God, I m dead. You ve got to recharge me now." As we pray, we plug ourselves into the wall, and we get more and more alive. That s why it s so important that, if you want to be a person of life, the first thing you do is pray. You plug yourself into the wall to get your batteries charged for the day. That s more important than doing your hair, that s more important than "taking a dump," that s more important than anything else you do in the morning. What s more important is that we pray - that we enter into this intimacy with Jesus, this intimacy with prayer, with God, that we might have LIFE every day, and the life is from Jesus, not from us. So, the challenge from the Word of God this day is that you and I would be people who know that Jesus is the Way, and we enter into the Way, we don t just follow the Way, we don t just use the example of the Way. He is the Truth. We are people who search for Truth. We are people who have Life in Him. When that happens, we go to the last part of today s Gospel, in John 14:12. If you don t have this underlined, please underline it now. I have it underlined and have written next to it, "His Promise." This is the Promise of God. "I solemnly assure you, the one who has faith in Me will do the works that I do." The next line is very strong..."and I tell you, far greater than these." Jesus Christ says of us that we will not only be people who are fully alive in Him, we will not only do what Jesus did, but we will do things greater than Jesus Christ ever did, because of His Promise. That s the Promise. You ve got to underline it, and you ve got to claim it, because it all comes from Him. He is the Way, He
is the Truth, He is the Life, and when we participate in Him, we ARE the presence of Christ on earth, and He lives within us. It s He that does all the things in us. May each of you know his love today and forever. Amen.