It's not where it's who

Homily
Friday of the 4th Week of Easter
30 April 2010
Year for Priests

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Where are you from? A lot of times when we meet someone new that is our first question. Where were you born? Where do you live? Have you done any traveling? It is a way to find out if we have anything in common, if we've ever lived close to another person or perhaps if we know some of the same people. Many people love to travel. It is easy to get excited for a big trip, or a long trip. It is fun to see new places.

Of course heaven is a place we to which we would all like to travel. Its promise is greater than anything we can imagine, far beyond even the greatest trip we could plan on this earth. Even greater than any space travel we could conjure up. Jesus is previewing for his disciples in today's Gospel that He will do some traveling in the near future unlike the traveling the disciples are used to. In fact, they will think that they have lost Him, that He has gone away on a trip to which they are not invited. Jesus tells them not to worry. That He will come back and take them to where He is. He tells them to have faith, and to not let their hearts be troubled. He tells them to ponder deeply what they have learned, and they will know the way themselves.

Thomas calls his bluff. He tells Jesus to quit speaking obscurely. He tells Jesus that they have no idea what He is talking about. Thomas is right, in a sense, that where Jesus is going is not a place in an ordinary sense of place. The disciples do not know the way to a place where they have never been. Jesus answers Thomas' good question by saying that heaven is more of a person than a place. I am the way, the truth and the life, He says. No one comes to the Father except through me. Jesus reveals through Thomas' question that there is no such thing as place unless there is first a person. The reason there is somewhere rather than nowhere is that love is the ground of all reality. Love is ultimate reality, and all creation and all persons and all places flow from the person of God, who is Love. Jesus reminds his disciples that if they know God, and if they know how to love, they will always know the way.

The Gospel dialogue for today reminds us that as we come to know other people, and to let ourselves be known, the most important question, a question that lies behind where are you you from, and where do you live, and where are you going, is the question of who do you love the most, and who loves you the most? If love is the ground of all being, there is no identity for us, no matter where we have traveled, apart from these fundamental relationships of love.