John 14:1-12     ‘I am the Way’

Philip and Thomas are desperate to understand more fully where Jesus is going.  They want to know how they can get there, what God is like, and how can they see God.  Big questions that show their deep desire to know God more intimately.  Jesus urges the disciples to embrace the journey, the Way that lies ahead of them, rather than focusing on the destination.  For it is only in the light of the events that will happen to them (and us) that any period of time can be fully understood.  In the past the phrase ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life . . .’ may have been used to exclude those who did not consider themselves followers of Christ, but this is a distortion of a beautiful text.  Jesus is the Way because he models the Way for us, and we are invited to follow.

We read throughout the Scriptures that people experience God in different ways.  For Moses it was in a burning bush or a cloud; for Elijah it was a whisper; for Solomon and Joseph it was in a dream.

Philip wants to see God, and the response he receives is that God can be experienced in the here and now, for to know Jesus is to know God (Jn 1:1-18).  Jesus, through his life, shows us what the presence of God in this world looks like and, at the same time, what it means to be fully human.  Through him we see that God is loving, inclusive, embracing all people, compassionate.  Jesus invites us to contemplate this mystery of God’s presence in him, ‘I am in the Father and the Father is in me. . .’  We are invited to become more aware of this truth today, that the sacred is present in the material universe, in human form, in created matter, and through Jesus we can come to see this more deeply.

© Triona Doherty & Jane Mellet, 2022.  A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Matthew.  (Dublin: Messenger Publications 2022).

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“The Eternal Christ is thus revealed as the map, the blueprint, the promise, the pledge, the guarantee of what is happening everywhere, all summed up in one person so we can see it in personified form.    Richard Rohr