Every morning as part of my prayer I pray for many people, beginning with my parents. I always pray they rest in peace. Lately with the corona virus crisis, I think of them and wonder how they would have dealt with this. My parents were born in very challenging times, in 1916 and 1918, the time of the Great War and the Spanish Flu. They lived through a pandemic, the Great Depression, World War II, and much more. They sacrificed so much for their country and their community. They dealt with other crises of family and work. Yet somehow they survived their journey, grew through it, were different because of it, and gave their children faith, educations, culture and values. The did amazing things! I give thanks every day for them.
Today’s gospel is part of the Farewell Discourse of Jesus to his family at the Last Supper. Jesus has just washed the disciples’ feet and now he tries to let them know he is going. As we read on Holy Thursday John’s gospel does not speak about the institution of the Eucharist where Jesus breaks and blesses bread and the cup, but John’s focus is the washing of feet to show Eucharist is service. John also adds this lengthy last discourse to emphasize what Jesus’ life was about and how his disciples would continue his ministry. The opening words today, “Do not let your hearts be troubled” seem to be aimed at us as we go through such troubling times of a pandemic with no end in sight. Can we really accept Jesus’ words for us today in the midst of so much trouble?
Jesus speaks of leaving, which the disciples do not understand. Throughout the gospel of Mark the questions over and over are, “Who is Jesus? and “What does it mean to follow Jesus?” So, we focus on the who and what of Jesus. However, in the gospel of John the question becomes where, “Where is Jesus?” In the beginning of the gospel the first disciples ask Jesus, “Where are you staying?” to which Jesus answers, “Come and see.” Pilate asks the same thing, “Where are you from?” Mary Magdalene tells the disciples on Easter, “We do not know where they have taken him.” So, John wants you to ask the “where” question, “Where do I find Jesus?” It is a good and hard question for us because we have to work on it all the time.
John’s answer in the gospel is that finding Jesus does not refer to a physical location but rather inner communion that comes from belief in him and the Father. When Jesus speaks of many mansions in his Father’s house he does not mean specific places but rather a profound union with him that is in the present and deepens in the fullness of time. So, the question of where does not refer so much to the end place but the where refers to the journey, which is experiencing more and more the inner communion with Jesus. We are invited on that journey all our lives. We need to be aware of the importance that we stay on the journey constantly looking to see where Jesus is along the way.
A few years ago I walked the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain with a couple of friends from my parish, Robert and Lori Valdez. We were on a thousand year old path of pilgrims on the way to Santiago de Campostela to visit the Basilica of St James. This journey has been walked by millions of people over the centuries. I began to understand during the five day walk that a pilgrimage is not just arriving at your destination but the process of the journey. It is sometimes hard and tiring. It is sometimes confusing as you are not sure exactly which way to go. It sometimes forces you to reflect on your life as you walk long stretches in silence. It is in the movement, the process of going through time and space, that you understand how much you are changed by the journey. The pilgrimage is a microcosm of your own pilgrimage through life. We are all on a movement now with this pandemic. How will we be changed by it? Can we be changed for the better?
So, it is how you live on the journey that is important more than all that you accomplish in life. The end result is not what you have accumulated, or where you live, or how many honors you have received that are so important, but how you have gotten there, how you traveled the journey. Jesus says he is the way. Did you travel with him, looking for him, acknowledging him, sharing him, doing what he did for others? That is living the inner communion Jesus invites us to in the gospel today.
Jesus is the way to the Father. That unity we experience in the liturgy. We have missed the community that gathers every Sunday in church. We are eager to return soon, even with restrictions and precautions. John’s community had been expelled from the synagogue, where they had worshipped all their lives. Religious prejudice had hit them. Most Jews saw them as traitors following a fraud, namely Jesus, and had told them not to return to community worship. This was devastating to them just as the closing of churches has been to us. They had grown up with the synagogue as the heart of their faith, the place to encounter God. So, John is showing with this long discourse of Jesus that it was not being in the place of the synagogue that was important but rather the way they lived their lives in communion with Jesus. We are “living stones” that form the Church as Peter says in the second reading. You carry and build Church with you on the way.
Yes, the gathering in church for Mass is the most important action we take each week. It will be important to return. The gospel today tells us that the returning is part of the pilgrimage, the going and the coming, the journey, to strengthen us to keep walking, despite the challenges, anxiety and suffering. Being in the gathering is an important part, but not the only part, of living in communion with Jesus. Jesus promises us a way to God through him and the result will be doing greater works than even Jesus did. That is what he says.
We are now going through the journey of this virus. It is a hard and difficult journey. We see tragedy and suffering and sacrifice all around us. Yet, faithfulness to the journey must be our focus. We should not just want to get to the end of this virus and then say we are back to normal. The journey, the pilgrimage, we are on demands we be different as we move through this. It demands we be transformed by union with Jesus. It demands we do the works of Jesus and even more.
The question is where? Where are you going? What has this time told you about where your life is heading? Has the journey these past weeks and months helped you see what is really important in life and what you need to do? If not, it is never too late.
Jesus is in this journey of the pandemic, in the blisters, in the suffering, in the sacrifices, in the person behind the mask you see at the store, in those serving the public in so many ways at great cost, in those in line for emergency food, in those next to you at home that at times annoy you. Can you see Him? Walk the walk and appreciate what it can do for you if you take the time to fully enter into the pilgrimage. When we do get to the end of this, and there will be an end, we will be able to look back over the process, the walk, the journey, the pilgrimage, and say we have done what Jesus did and even more.
Fr. David Garcia is a retired priest from the Archdiocese of San Antonio, Texas, where he served for 44 years. During that time, Fr. Garcia was instrumental in the effort to have the Old Spanish Missions recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and also oversaw the multimillion-dollar restoration of San Fernando Cathedral. Fr. David served as pastor for several parishes in San Antonio, including the historic Mission Concepción. He also served as Senior Advisor for Clergy Outreach at Catholic Relief Services, the official international humanitarian and relief agency of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.