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"Jesus: The Way, The Truth, and The Life" 

I wish to speak to you today about Jesus Christ. In recent years I have thought a great deal about the meaning Jesus has for me and for all people. I have also tried to enter into closer communion with the Lord through prayer, so that no part of my life, no part of myself, would be excluded from my relationship with Him. This search for union has been an exciting and life-giving experience. But it has also brought pain and frustration.

Pain, because the closer I am drawn to Jesus, the more conscious I become of my shortcomings and sinfulness. Jesus is the Light of the world. As one approaches that light, it brings ever more sharply into relief the darkness of one’s own life.

Frustration, because growth in intimacy with the Lord intensifies my desire to proclaim Him and His gospel to the whole world—a task to which I often feel unequal. There is so much to do, and I often feel that my efforts fall short of the mark.

But I do not despair in this. St. Paul provides a model for my life and ministry because he was so caught up with Jesus, so much in love with Him. Paul was convinced that his real strength was in the Lord, and so he would not surrender to discouragement. Despite his many trials and personal shortcomings, he continued to trust in the Lord and strengthened his resolve to preach the Gospel to all people, whatever the cost to himself.

The study of Jesus and His meaning for us today is very important for those of us who identify ourselves as "Christians." We must come to know Jesus and His teaching if we want to follow Him in more than mere name. We have to know Him more intimately if we want to know who we are, what it means to live as Christians. Our resources for this task are the study of theology, prayer, and the practice of the Christian life.

I will organize my reflections around three basic concepts: first, the human longing for God and God’s response to this; second, the role of Jesus in our relationship with God; and third, the appropriate response we are called upon to make.

I

Our Longing for God and God’s Response

My many years of ministry have convinced me that in the heart of every human being there wells up an irrepressible desire to be united with God. I do not mean to imply that every person is able to identify this phenomenon as a longing for God. Some may seek fulfillment of it in some other way or may simply be aware of a kind of human emptiness. God has put this desire in our hearts, and not even sin cancels it.

Psalm 63 expresses this longing in a particularly beautiful way:

O God, you are my God,
for you I long;
for you my soul is thirsting.
My body pines for you
like a dry, weary land without water.

Our whole person is involved in this longing. Without God in our lives, we dry up, we tire easily, we find it next to impossible to bring forth new life in our daily world.

St. Augustine gave a particularly poignant expression to this same human phenomenon. His own spiritual pilgrimage and ultimate conversion from a wayward life made him keenly aware of the soul’s anguish when it is not in communion with its Lord: "You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts will be restless until they find their rest in you."

It is God who plants this desire in our hearts and the same God who responds to it. Conscious as we are of our own broken, sinful condition, we may find this hard to believe. But the traditions of the community of faith chronicle God’s revelation of Himself to His people from the patriarchal days of the Old Testament through the New Testament revelation of God’s Son to our own day. At its heart, human history has been the story of God’s revelation of Himself to His creatures and of our response to Him, sometimes a faithful response, sometimes an unfaithful one.

II

Jesus as The Way, The Truth and The Life

The revelation of God reaches its fullness in Jesus, who is Lord and Savior, but also our Brother. He has taught us what God the Father is like and has sent God the Spirit into our lives. Above all, Jesus is "the way, the truth, and the life."

In what sense is Jesus our way to the Father? Through His death and resurrection, he has reconciled us with His Father. As St. Paul says, "If, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him by the death of His Son, it is all the more certain that we who have been reconciled will be saved by His life. Not only that; we go so far as to make God our boast through Our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation" (Romans 5:10-11).

The death and resurrection of the Lord are not merely historical events that happened in a particular time and place. They are life-giving events whose power permeates each of our lives. Their impact will never cease. More than that, those who seek to follow Christ are called in a mysterious way to participate in these events through their lives. As Paul tells the Corinthians: "Continually we carry about in our bodies the dying of Jesus, so that in our bodies the life of Jesus may also be revealed" (II Corinthians 4:10).

Jesus is also our way to the Father through the Church which He established and through which He continues His saving mission in the world. Our relationship with God is not merely an individual relationship. As the people of God, we belong to a community in continuity with those who have gone before, those who have passed on to us the traditions of faith. The Church is not a mere organization, but a community of faith over which the risen Lord presides and through which the baptized make their pilgrim way to the Father. The Scriptures make it clear that the pilgrimage of faith is not merely an individual matter.

Jesus is also the truth because He reveals to us His Father’s truth. In fact, He does more than tell us about His Father: He is the Father’s revelation to us. The prologue of St. John’s Gospel tells us "No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, ever at the Father’s side, who has revealed Him" (John 1:18).

Jesus has revealed the Father to us in His very being and life. He not only taught about a loving and forgiving Father, He lived His own life in a loving and forgiving way. He practiced what He preached. He taught in a very simple, down-to-earth way. So compelling was His personality and His words that people were anxious to hear what He had to say. They seem to have gone to considerable trouble just to be with Him for awhile. At the same time He called them to a way of life that was not always to their liking.

Jesus revealed to us His Father’s great love and His plan for the human family most strikingly in His death and resurrection. "There is no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. I no longer speak of you as servants, for a servant does not know what his master is about. Instead, I call you friends, since I have made known to you all that I heard from my Father" (John 15:13-15).

Jesus’ teaching mission did not end with His public ministry. He promised to send the Holy Spirit to His disciples, to that early community of believers. The teaching mission of Jesus is carried on, through the power of His Spirit, in the Church.

Jesus is also the life because in and through Him we are restored to a right relationship with the Father and are capable of spiritual growth. In and through Jesus we are "reborn" in the spiritual order, becoming a new creation. This turning to the Lord and being "reborn" is conversion. Initial conversion may be a sudden event, but thorough-going conversion is the work of a lifetime—a work to which we all are called.

According to the Old Testament, the covenant between God and His people was ratified and renewed by a particular ritual. Part of the rite involved pouring some of the blood of a sacrificial animal on the altar and sprinkling the rest of it on the people. They understood that blood was especially linked with life and therefore it was understood as a symbol of life. When the blood was poured and sprinkled, it signified that there was a restoration of the flow of life between God and His people. In the New Covenant, this flow of life is seen in the Blood of Jesus, poured out on our behalf. As St. John tells us, "Yes, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him may not die but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

III

Our Response in Faith to Jesus

Our primary response to God’s self-revelation is one of faith. Faith in the Scriptures is not so much intellectual assent to abstract truths. This Jesus we have been talking about is not a myth, an abstraction, or a mere memory. He is alive and close to us—now, at this very moment. He is brother. He is lover. He is friend. He cares about us, about our well-being and needs, about our joys and sorrows.

Faith is a response to the person of Jesus, a personal and individual response to His presence in us and in our world. For St. Paul faith means obedience, commitment to the Lord. It means trusting Him and His word to such an extent that we entrust our entire lives to His care and love. It also implies that we dedicate ourselves to becoming the kind of people He calls us to be.

To respond with faith and love means that we have to give attention on a regular basis to this relationship with the Lord. It means taking time for personal as well as community prayer. It means investing time in studying and reflecting upon the Word of God so that we can learn more about Him, about ourselves, and about how we are called to live this new life.

Such a response results in new discoveries. First of all, through prayer and reflection, it involved discovery of God the Father, the Lord Jesus, and the Spirit of God. At times this can be an overwhelming experience as we become awestruck at the infinite power of God our Creator and our Savior. At other times we are grateful for the revelation of His gentleness and intimacy. He is the Shepherd who cares for His flock with love and generosity, the Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep! He is Jesus who embraces small children with great tenderness and who has compassion on the poor and needy.

Our response in faith also involves discovery of our true selves. Our own creation is an on-going affair. It is as though God were not finished with any of us just yet. We are called to continue to grow in holiness before God and before one another. The Word of God, the teaching of Jesus, challenges each of us to continue to become more aware of the kind of person that God wants us to be and to take appropriate steps to become that person.

Someone once suggested that there are three key days in any person’s life. The first is the day of birth. The second is the day when one comes to realize why he or she was born. The third is the day that the person begins to do something about this mission. In my experience, all three days are closely bound up with God’s presence in our lives. The second and third days are intimately linked with prayer.

The discoveries associated with our response of faith and love are not limited to discoveries of God and our true selves. They also involve discovery of one another. As we come to believe and understand that we are God’s children, we also come to realize that all people are called to be children of the one God. This in turn implies that we are all brothers and sisters in the Lord. For most of us, this discovery involves the greatest challenge of all and calls for vital changes in the way we live our lives. Many people today are suffering, have empty lives, search vainly for meaning. They are all around us—they may include members of our own family, our closest friends, the people with whom we work. We see this emptiness and despair, for example, in a betrayed spouse, in a person whose zest for life has been eroded by serious illness or loneliness, in those who have lost control over their destiny because of drugs or drinking, those who have become cynical or bitter because of life’s difficulties and disappointments, those on the verge of despair because the material values in which they trusted have failed them.

As believers in the Lord Jesus, people who have experienced His love and mercy, we can bring joy, consolation and hope to those who are suffering. We cannot remove all the pain and frustration which are part of the human condition. But we can help people cope better with their trials especially through our own example. Sometimes we help people the most when we are simply with them, not offering advice or potential solutions to serious and complicated problems. We can take the lead from our own experience. Perhaps you will agree with me that sometimes we simply need someone who will sit with us, pray with us, love us.

Our discovery of our brothers and sisters must also include the poor. The Gospels depict Jesus’ great sensitivity to the poor and the oppressed. He was criticized by some for openly associating with them and acting as their advocate. Of course, such criticism did not prompt Him to avoid this important aspect of His ministry. There are some today who advocate that the Church or its leaders should not engage in what some narrowly define as purely political issues. All human concerns also have a moral dimension, however. As a follower of Christ and a minister of the Gospel, I simply cannot keep silent when my brothers or sisters are the victims of injustice whether through malice or ignorance. Fidelity to His teaching and His example demands that we show the same concern for the poor and suffering people of our day, especially by promoting social justice.

The Gospels also portray Jesus as a man of peace. Whenever He spoke about God’s kingdom, He did so in the traditional ways of the Old Testament prophets, making it clear that justice and peace were to be among its essential hallmarks. He wanted people to live together in harmony, working to build up the human family rather than to destroy it. As followers of Jesus, we are called to take up this mission and work to bring about peace, harmony, and love among all nations. The Gospels make it clear that this is not something optional for Christians. The times in which we live add a sense of urgency to this vital aspect of Christian life and ministry.

Perhaps what Jesus has revealed to us can be summarized by saying that God is clearly fond of each of us and of all of us. He is so fond of us that He cannot bear for us to be separated from Him. He sent His Son to show us the way back to Him, to teach us the truth about Himself and ourselves, to give us the opportunity for eternal life.

I believe in the Lord Jesus and in what He has taught us. I wish to love Him with all my mind and heart and soul. The great desire of my life is to be intimately united with Him so that I can experience in the very depth of my being His great love for me. Then in my ministry I can work tirelessly to proclaim Jesus and His Gospel to the entire human family.

I also wish to encourage you to continue your own search for the Lord and to seek to grow in intimacy with Him. Jesus was someone like us in all things but sin, and so He understands our situation. He too experienced pain and suffering. When you feel misunderstood, lonely, discouraged, wounded or abandoned, know that Jesus has experienced these feelings also and will be with you in His love and mercy.

I also invite you to join me in prayer for all those who are not close to the Lord, people who desperately need to experience His love but who, for whatever reason, have not yet experienced His mercy and love. Pray that they will be led to reach out to the Lord so that they can experience His healing power. Besides our praying for them, let us live our lives with such love and concern that Jesus may find us fitting vehicles to reveal Himself and His Gospel to other people.

May the love, joy, peace, and hope which are the fruit of fidelity to Jesus be with us always!

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