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Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter

Acts 13:26-33; Ps 2:6-11; Jn 14:1-6
“You are my son; this day I have begotten you!”

Without the psalms we would not be able to “serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice before him; with trembling pay homage to him.” The psalms are used throughout the New Testament to help elaborate the mystery of Christ. The Second Psalm is used by Saint Luke in his Acts of the Apostles to help us understand the promise God made to our ancestors in raising up the Lord Jesus. As Saint Paul preaches, it is this Lord Jesus who was raised up in his ministry, on the cross, and in the resurrection. He is the king that God has set up on his holy mountain. He is the one who will inherit all the nations “and the ends of the earth.” This Son of God speaks of his Father’s house in which there are many dwelling places. Those who will dwell with the Father already abide with the Son who reveals himself as The Way. Indeed, there is only one way to the Father and that is through his only Son, Jesus the Lord. Those who follow the Way are also lifted up, and being lifted up means that they are begotten anew, made a new creation.

Saint Paul concludes his preaching to “the family of Abraham and you others who reverence our God” by a reference to the Second Psalm. In his first sermon at the synagogue in Antioch, Saint Paul ends hi summary of salvation history by referring to Christ and his rejection, execution, and burial. “Yet God raised him from the dead, and for many days thereafter Jesus appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem.” It’s the good news of the appearances of the Risen Lord that creates confident witnesses. Saint Paul is confident, when he makes a personal appeal to his fellow Jews and all who reverence the God of Israel. God promised our ancestors and fulfills his promise to us by raising up the one they took down from the tree and laid in a tomb. David’s Son, the Lord Jesus, is now begotten of the Father. This promise is fulfilled for us in raising us up through him, with him, and in him. Indeed, we who have been baptized into his death and resurrection both Jew and Gentile have found The Way into God.

In Saint John’s Gospel today, the Lord Jesus proclaims himself to be the Way into God when he says, “I AM the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.” After offering his disciples the comfort of knowing that even though he must go away they will join him in his Father’s house of many dwelling places. Through the washing of feet and the sharing of the morsel, they have suspicions about the Lord Jesus’ eminent departure, and they are saddened. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” the Lord Jesus says because you will see me again. Indeed, we will abide, dwell, and live together in the Father’s house. “You know the way that leads where I go.” Saint Thomas objects to this by admitting ignorance about the place and the way to get there. The way the Lord Jesus has treated all his disciples, washing their feet and sharing a meal, has revealed and concealed his future. The way the Lord Jesus has preached the Father’s will and preformed the Father’s works has both revealed and concealed the Way. The Lord Jesus freely turns over his life and in dying makes himself the Way we can live. The Lord Jesus teaches the truth of the power of self-sacrificing love to change the way people live. He is the life and the truth of the Eucharist, which is the only way to live, broken open, and poured out for the nourishment of all who reverence our God.