The first part of the Gospel for this weekend is forever etched into my mind. While it is certainly a beautiful and meaningful passage, the reason why I have it memorized is not because of a particular sentimental attachment to it, but because it has become the de facto Gospel reading for the funerals I celebrate. I could recite the first six verses from memory, in a pinch. But rarely do I have the opportunity to see it put in its broader context, and it stirred up in my heart a reflection on friendship and human nature.

People choose this passage for funerals because they find solace in the fact that Jesus cares for His disciples enough to prepare a place for them and take them to Himself, to dwell with Him and His Father in the Spirit for eternity. But the broader point He wants to make to His disciples is that knowing Jesus is the same as knowing the Father. By His Incarnation, by the very act of uniting His divine nature to our human nature, He has closed the gap in the relationship we can have with our Father in Heaven. While there are still times when we pray for the forgiveness of our sins and even proclaim our own unworthiness, we can also pray with the intimacy of a child turning to their Father with love.
 
To know Jesus is to know the Father. To prepare ourselves for the next life, we spend a lifetime, however long or short that might be, walking with Jesus so that He can present us to the Father to be  brought home at the end of our days. This is an
unspeakable gift, one that should make us weep tears of joy to know the plans that God has made for us. The major sticking point then becomes how well we know Jesus and how closely we unite ourselves to Him. In every life of Faith there should be a moment when we realize that God loves us more than we can possibly imagine and that any response other than giving ourselves entirely to Him is laughable. All the catechesis and disengaged prayer in the world falls flat if it doesn’t lead us to a deep encounter with Christ. Prayer, the scriptures, and the sacraments are all meant to strengthen and facilitate that encounter, but at one point or another we have to fall in love with Jesus.

This time of physical isolation has helped me to reconnect with people that I wish I had more time to talk to. I’ve been on the phone with priest friends, friends from college, and guys I grew up with in St. Bernard. I’ve had many chances to simply talk and take delight in the unique mystery of creation that each one of them represents. During those conversations, they stop being constructs in my mind, and once again can be seen as flesh and blood people, beloved sons and daughters of God in Heaven. I’ve gotten to know them better, and I revel in these renewed friendships. When we let people become abstractions, we lose the reality of who they really are. They are not static individuals, but constantly growing and changing acts of love. Our relationship with Jesus has to be the same. If we isolate Jesus in a particular time in our life and don’t continually seek Him out in prayer, He becomes an abstraction, and we miss out on the ways in which He is calling us to grow in holiness.
 
St. Theresa of Calcutta once wrote an earnest letter to her sisters saying that she was afraid that they didn’t truly know Jesus. She was writing to women who spent the entirety of their days in prayer and service to the poorest of the poor, but she saw that they were not pursuing Jesus with the same fullness of love that He had poured out for them on the Cross. If that can be said of those women who seem like walking saints, how much more so can it be said of us?
 
To know Jesus is to know the Father. Spend the remainder of these bizarre times reconnecting. Connect with old friends and with family that you don’t see enough by all means. But if you want to partake fully in the place that God has prepared for you, then above all else seek out Jesus. See Him as He truly is: God become man, who took on our nature to redeem it and be close to us. Closeness with Jesus is the fullness of the glory that God has in store for us in this life and the next.
 
Prayers always,
Fr. McC