Et Invenietis Requiem

5th Sunday of Easter
18 May, 2014

Recording

AND YE SHALL FIND REST from the long sojourn of life, in the Father’s house, where The Son has gone ahead of you to prepare the way for all the sons of God.

The place was Jerusalem, the time was Passover, and thousands of pious Jews had descended, as they did every year, on the Holy City to celebrate the great feast of their liberation from Egypt. They stayed in cramped and overcrowded homes and hostels, and in make-shift tents pitched in every open area around the city. They travelled there to worship God in his holy dwelling place, the Temple. 

Their journeys from across the Holy Land to Jerusalem were reminiscent of the 40-year sojourn of the Israelites and a deliberate reminder of their history as a wandering people in search of the Promised Land. Their celebration was under the shadow of occupation, as it had been since the fall of Israel and Judah. The heavy cloak of impermanence and the transience of their lives was only lifted by the permanence of their God and their hope for better times with the prophesied coming of the Messiah.

And so Jesus told his disciples how they should understand the events that would happen in the days ahead: his death, resurrection and ascension into heaven, as the willing action of God to reconcile all men to himself and to permit the eternal inheritance of the kingdom of God for all that would be co-heirs in him.

Of course, Christ was acutely aware of the sinful nature of his disciples and of all men who share the human condition. He was aware that divine justice would not permit a single one of us to gain entry to the Father’s house on our own merits in adhering to the law. This is why God himself had to be the sacrifice for the sins of the world. No other immolation would suffice, nor indeed ever be required again to appease the just anger of God.

And so we find Jesus at pains to emphasise that he and the Father are one. To look upon Jesus is to see the Godhead. For any, like Philip, who might have any uncertainties, Jesus gives the unequivocal answer that he is in the Father, and the Father in him – true God from true God, he is one being with the Father.

It is therefore, so that their hearts will not be troubled, that Jesus – with death only hours away – comforts his disciples by saying that he leaves them to go and prepare a place for them in the Father’s house. He commands them to believe in him as they believe in God – for he is God – so that they need no longer wander in search of the Promised Land, like shepherd-less sheep scattered in vain search of pasture. The time for wandering is at an end. They have reached, in Christ, their home and obtained their inheritance – the Promised Land, the Father’s house.

Our own lives too, are no less a sojourn than for our ancestors in the faith. Ours may be lived at high speed, compared to the Israelites who walked 40-years in the desert. We may have homes, for some, where we and generations before us have lived. But our lives are no less fleeting and impermanent than for those we read about in the bible. If anything, we have made a celebration of transience – everything from our cars and our phones to our relationships and our careers is becoming ever more transitory. Many of us are fortunate that we do not have to fear for lack of sustenance, or shelter. But in the security of the Goodlife, we are no less at risk of losing our souls.

For in the frenzy of modern life we risk losing the abiding permanence of God. Sunday Mass is something we conveniently box in between shopping and a movie. And God forbid that a Holy Day of Obligation is not translated to a Sunday. Prayer is for time of need; and love of God and neighbour becomes a means to an end. Indeed, we live life in the fast lane, but it is all to easy to lose one’s sense of direction and lose sight of our ultimate destination.

Take comfort, then, in the assurance of our Blessed Lord that our lives – sometimes so full of to-dos that they become aimless – have a higher aim secured for us in the Father’s house, where Christ both leads and waits for us, to grant rest from our assiduous quest for gratification in this life, in an eternal abode from which we may partake in the one thing that was from the beginning, is now, and ever shall be – God.

So, my brothers, in your earthly wanderings, keep always in sight the house of our Father. And when you fear that you are losing your way amidst the fleeting distractions of the world, do not fear to ask – as did Thomas in today’s Gospel, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” And listen to the reply of your Lord, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” 

The Way, is to acknowledge The Truth that Jesus reveals about Himself, His Father and His Kingdom, to which he now goes. Living in the light of The Truth means that the gift of The Life eternal is ours.