Coffee With God

Reflection: John 14: 1-6

Today we celebrate the liturgical memorial of Our Lady of Fatima. Between May and October 1917, Our Lady appeared several times to three Portuguese children – Francisco and Jacinta Marto, and their cousin, Lucia dos Santos, in a cove near Fatima, in Portugal. In those apparitions, Our Lady asked the children to pray the Rosary for the world and for the conversion of sinners. 105 years are on, and the message of Our Lady resonates in a world that stands in need of peace, healing and hope for a future. Today’s Gospel is one of three farewell speeches of Jesus at the Last Supper. They are called so because in them Jesus seems to dictate his will before his death. A Will of a person acquires its meaning only after the death of the person who dictated it. Easter is the most suitable time to understand the will, given by Jesus and to meditate on them. John while writing the passage, followed the pattern of farewell speech recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy. The book was compiled many centuries after the death of Moses, with the purpose of introducing the teachings of Moses to the contemporaries of the actual author. The Farewell Discourse in the Gospel was the attempt of John to summarise for his community the significance of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Pope Francis points out that “in this passage, the Lord consoles his saddened disciples in close proximity. He is never distant. He reassures them with words: “I am here, with you.” He promises to return soon to take them to the world of Jesus, and of the Father. I will take you with me, so that you may be where I am. Imagine in a family of newly wedded couples, when one of the spouses has to leave the home for a distant land for work. His or her promise would be, let me go and make arrangements there and then I will take you to the place so that we can be together… The Bible has numerous times expressed the relationship between God and his people as one of spousal relationship. John formulated this discourse to assist the believers of his community to experience the consolation of Jesus and the Father. They had lived sixty years of life without the physical presence of Jesus. John reminds them that the way to God’s consolation is the way, of which they were already familiar: the way of believing, of trusting and, of surrendering to the love of Jesus. It is not easy to be consoled by the Lord. Especially in bad times, we get angry with the Lord when our prayers have no immediate answers and we refuse to let him come in and speak to us with his tenderness, closeness, and gentleness. Let us continue to hope in the consolation of God.