5th Sunday of Easter – The Pilgrimage to Truth 04-20-08

Scripture Readings
First Acts 6:1-7
Second 1 Peter 2:4-9
Gospel John 14:1-12

Prepared by: Fr. Jonathan Kalisch, OP

1. Subject Matter
• The itinerary of our pilgrimage on earth is now understood to be the path of the Christ’s
paschal mystery. In the light of the Resurrection, we do know the way, and we have the
promise of knowing and seeing the Father through the revelation of his love in Christ.
• Through the faith that sees the Father in the Son, disciples are tasked to a mission in which
they will do even greater works, for the glorification of God.

2. Exegetical Notes
• God the Father is revealed through the words and works of Jesus (John 10:30, 17:11, 21).
• Jesus is the Way through which we have access to the Father, by making the Father known
to the world (John 1:18, 12:45, 14:9). He is the Truth as the teacher and “personification of
worship ‘in spirit and truth’ which alone pleases the Father” (Jn 4:23). Jesus is the Life – to
know the Father present in the Son is eternal life (17:3) (Jerusalem Bible)

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• CCC 460: “The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is
why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by
entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a
son of God.” "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."(80) "The
only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so
that he, made man, might make men gods."
• CCC 1698: “The first and last point of reference of this catechesis will always be Jesus Christ
himself, who is "the way, and the truth, and the life." It is by looking to him in faith that
Christ's faithful can hope that he himself fulfills his promises in them, and that, by loving him
with the same love with which he has loved them, they may perform works in keeping with
their dignity…”
• CCC 769: “’The Church progresses on her pilgrimage amidst this world’s persecutions and
God’s consolations.’ Here below she knows that she is in exile far from the Lord, and longs
for the full coming of the Kingdom, when she will ‘be united in glory with her king.’”

4. Patristic Commentary
• St. Augustine: “They knew, therefore, and did not know that they knew. He will convince
them that they already know what they imagine themselves still to be ignorant of. “Jesus
saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” What, brethren, does He mean?
See, we have just heard the disciple asking, and the Master instructing, and we do not yet,
even after His voice has sounded in our ears, apprehend the thought that lies hid in His
words. But what is it we cannot apprehend? Could His apostles, with whom He was talking,
have said to Him, We do not know Thee? Accordingly, if they knew Him, and He Himself is
the way, they knew the way; if they knew Him who is Himself the truth, they knew the truth; if
they knew Him who is also the life, they knew the life. Thus, you see, they were convinced
that they knew what they knew not that they knew.”
• Hilary: “He who is the way does not lead us off the right path; he who is the truth does not
deceive us with falsehoods; and he who is the life does not abandon us to death.”
• St. Thomas Aquinas: “Truth belongs essentially to him because he is the Word…And
because no one can know the truth unless he adheres to the truth, it is necessary that
anyone who desires to know the truth adhere to this Word.”
• St. Thomas Aquinas: “ And Augustine says: ‘Walk like this human being and you will bome
to God. It is better to limp along on the way than to walk briskly off the way.’ For one who
limps on the way, even though he makes just a little progress, is approaching his destination;
but if one walks off the way, the faster he goes the further he gets from his destination.”
• St. Thomas Aquinas: “ Philip said, ‘Show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.’ This was
like saying: we know you, but that is not enough. Thus he believed that there was complete
sufficiency in knowing the Father, but not in knowing the Son. He seemed to think that the
Son was inferior to the Father. This is what our Lord reproved, showing that there is the
same sufficiency in knowing the Son as there is in knowing the Father.”

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

• St. Catherine of Sienna wrote to the elders of Lucca: "Know, dear brothers, that all of us are
on the way, pilgrims and fellow travelers.... But be comforted, because we have been given a
guide, and it is the only-begotten Word Incarnate, Son of God, who teaches us the way we
must go on that shining path that he himself is" (Letter 168).

6. Quotes

• Pope Benedict XVI: “With Jesus, what matters is precisely his Person, Christ himself. When
he says, “I am he,” we hear the tones of the “I AM” on Mount Horeb. The way consists
precisely in following him, for “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). He himself
is the way, and there is no way that is independent of him, on which he would no longer
 matter. Since the real message that he brings is not a doctrine but his very person…it draws
us completely into the dynamic of mission, because it leads to the surpassing of self and to
union with him for whom we have been created.”
• Pope Benedict XVI: “Faith is not just a system of knowledge, things we are told; at the heart
of it is a meeting with Jesus…this meeting with Jesus, among all those other meetings we
have need of, is the truly decisive one. All our other meetings leave the ultimate goal
unclear, where we are coming from, where we are going. At our meeting with him the
fundamental light dawns, by which I can understand God, man, the world, mission, and
meaning – and by which all the other meetings fall into place.”
• Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 6: “He tells us who man truly is and what a man must do in
order to be truly human. He shows us the way, and this way is the truth. He himself is both
the way and the truth, and therefore he is also the life which all of us are seeking. He also
shows us the way beyond death; only someone able to do this is a true teacher of life.”
• Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 6: “The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that
passes through the valley of death; one who walks with me even on the path of final solitude,
where no one can accompany me, guiding me through: he himself has walked this path, he
has descended into the kingdom of death, he has conquered death, and he has returned to
accompany us now and to give us the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way
through. The realization that there is One who even in death accompanies me, and with his
“rod and his staff comforts me”, so that “I fear no evil” (cf. Ps 23 [22]:4)—this was the new
“hope” that arose over the life of believers.”
• Pope Benedict XVI: “We must not rob discipleship of what is essential to it, namely cross
and Resurrection and Christ’s divine Sonship, his being ‘with the Father.’.. Discipleship
means that now we can go where (again according to John) Peter and the Jews initially could
not go. But now that hw has gone before us, we can go there too. Discipleship means
accepting the entire path, going forward into those things that are above, the hidden things
that are the real ones: truth, love, our being children of God…Discipleship is a stepping-
forward into what is hidden in order to find, through this genuine loss of self, what it is to be a
human being.”
• Pope Benedict XVI: “We can only encounter God by walking after Jesus; the only way we
can see him is by following Jesus, which means walking behind him and thus going along
behind God’s back. The way that God is seen in this world is by following Christ; seeing is
going, is being on the way for our whole life toward the living God, whereby Jesus Christ, by
the entire way that he walked…presents us with the itinerary…He himself is for us the face of
God.”
• Pope John Paul II: “He is the only way of salvation, the full truth that makes us free, the true
life that gives meaning to our existence. His radiant countenance of glory fully reveals to us
the truth of God and the truth of man. Everyone can fix his eyes on his face at any time, to
find understanding, serenity and forgiveness.”
• Pope John Paul II: “The “place” that Jesus goes to prepare is in “the house of the Father”;
there the disciple will be able to be with the Master for all eternity and share in his joy. Yet
there is only one path that leads there: Christ, to whom the disciple must be conformed more
and more. Holiness consists precisely in this: that it is no longer the Christian who lives, but
Christ himself who lives in him (cf. Gal 2:20). An exhilarating goal, accompanied by a
 promise which is no less consoling: “Whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do,
and greater works than I will they do, because I am going to the Father” (Jn 14:12).

7. Other Considerations
• A pilgrimage is undertaken to verify what one has heard or seen, and to encounter the truth
claim for oneself. The Christian life is a pilgrimage to God through the imitation of the path of
salvation marked out by Christ himself.
• In light of the events of the Passion and John 18:37: “For this I was born, and for this I came
into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice,”
believers have the certainty of faith in Christ.

Recommended Resources
Aquinas, St. Thomas Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, Part II (Petersham, MA: St. Bede’s
Publications).
Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI ed. Peter John Cameron, (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2006).
Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond Brown, Joseph Fitzmyer, and Roland Murphy,
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968).
Ratzinger, Joseph, Introduction to Christianity, trans. J.R. Foster, (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 2004)
http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerus/index_fra.html