FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

“ Im the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me”

(Jn.14,1-12)

Rev. Alexander Diaz

As time goes by, we enter deeper this wonderful time of Easter, today we are celebrating the Fifth Sunday of Easter.

This Sunday’s Gospel is a Gospel that recommend us to believe what Jesus does for the twelve. They feel in His words a great sadness, there is uncertainty in the teacher’s voice when He sees the human generation, that is represented by the Apostles, unable to believe and accept Him as Lord and Messiah.

Humanity has always questioned God and has turned against Him in spite of the multiple signs of love and in spite of His mercy shown thru His Son, Jesus Christ. The modern man and woman are day by day losing their faith and hope in God, not because God does not speak to them, but rather, very simply and straightforward, they have focused their attention on other concerns that do not allow them to believe, that makes them unhappy and lead them little by little to live a miserable and lonely life.

The Gospel of this Sunday reminds us that to have faith in the Father includes and realizes itself in our faith in Him. The encounter with the true God is possible only thru Jesus Christ: “No one comes to the Father except through Me” (Jn 14,6). All the paths in our sincere quest for our creator flows out to Christ.

To be a believer and to evangelize means to deepen the encounter of conversion with Jesus, to deeply know Him and to share the experience with others. To evangelize is not to indoctrinate or to commit oneself simply in social deeds; it is not even to give an intellectual speech about faith.

To evangelize is much more than that, it is to be a carrier, a bearer of a serious and profound friendship with the Lord. We have to try our best to get others to know Him with the same or deeper intensity.

Once someone asked Blessed John Paul II (Second), which was the most closer path to become a saint, the Blessed answered: the closer path to become a saint is to be a friend of Jesus, to establish a solid friendship without sense or notion, is simply to be an intimate friend in love and in the deep listening of this love. In our time, we have gotten used to receiving answers to the needs in our lives (i.e. food, clothes, etc).

They are satisfied and fulfilled with material things like money, machines, etc, instead of being fulfilled by people. It is true that all this comes to us thru the hands of other human beings, but none of these people become for us, the definite answer to all our interior needs.

We have made ours the famous phrase: “what you have is what you are worth” something that has no sense because material things do not develop or help you at all when you change it for the truth. In the context of the most profound needs of the human being is where Jesus’ affirmations are found. He is the path, and the truth and the life. It means this is the last explanation of the human life.

To find, to go in depth in the Lord is to build little by little the crossword puzzle of our lives. To put the pieces in their places so they will be completely visible. ¿How is it possible that those words pronounced by Jesus years ago, currently, at present, still make sense? ¿How Jesus keep on being today, after all these technical and industrial development, the answer to the human being?

The answers are very clear: Jesus’ words are addressed directly to the heart of each and every human being. It is the heart that must give the answer to the call. In spite of all the centuries, we, human beings, are not any different or unequal.

The history of humanity becomes present in our personal and specific history where we walk the same route. Also, on each one of us there is a prehistoric and a Middle Age, also a contemporary time that we have to learn how to conjugate in order to understand the role God plays in our lives.

Today text ends by reminding us that Jesus’ followers will do the works that He did and will do greater things than He did. The Lord describes to us the evolution process of faith.

Many people forget that faith has its process and an its evolution. We will not have a complete and total faith at the moment of our conversion.

Faith carves itself little by little, it is like a work of art where the authors are always two: God and you. In the extent we encounter the Teacher, we will become closer friends of Jesus and our faith will become more solid each day, because solid is our trust in Him.

AMEN!!