“You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”

"Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to My mercy." --Diary of St Faustina, Divine Mercy in my Soul (300)

Gospel Text: (JN 14:1-6)
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.
You have faith in God; have faith also in me.
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
If there were not,
would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back again and take you to myself,
so that where I am you also may be.
Where I am going you know the way.”
Thomas said to him,
“Master, we do not know where you are going;
how can we know the way?”
Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Do you want to know the way to happiness and joy – the way to eternal life – the way to peace in the midst of suffering – the way to triumph over sin and death – the way that will save you from misery, boredom, and an empty way of life? The way is Jesus. To be on the Way is to trust in Jesus. In one of his earliest homilies, the Apostle Peter said, “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.” There is no other way.

When I commute to work into New York City I see so many young adults who live lives of despair. They are anxious, bored, frustrated, and have no sense of meaning beyond the shallow relationships that only eventually lead to even greater despair. Many of them do not believe that there is a way so they fill up their time with activity after activity designed to help them forget. “Just get me through the night; I will deal the best I can with this crummy world when the morning comes.”

How do we tell our beautiful friends, and show them, that Jesus is the way, the only way, to what they seek?

In the beginning of this gospel reading, when Jesus says “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he is implying that we have control over how we let external things, people, places, situations, etc. affect us. I believe that we will never be truly at peace unless we are able to find happiness from somewhere deeper inside ourselves, instead of looking for that externally.

Let us, therefore, get closer, without any fright and with unlimited trust, to Him who is the only Way, the inalienable Truth and the fullness of Life.