A reading from the holy Gospel according to John
Jesus said to his disciples: “Are you discussing with one another what I said, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’? Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.”
By telling the disciples “you will not see me” and then “you will see me,” Jesus meets their concern directly. John tells us that “Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him” what this might mean. Its meaning is tied to the transient mourning he mentions to them, which stands in contrast to the world’s rejoicing at his death. That the world believes it has no God, that there is no ultimate truth to convict it, is not part of long ago in Jesus’ time but is just as much a reality in the world today. How do I adjust my sight to see that Jesus is present in this world?
Seeming to have gone out of sight with his death, Jesus gives God glory in his resurrection and ascension; the disciples see and understand that Jesus is the Messiah. Through the Gospel, the Eucharist, and in the Mystical Body of Christ, Jesus is alive in the world today and is always present. Christ is not subject to death. Dying and rising with him through Baptism, I am brought into sonship with him in the eternal love of the Father. As Saint John Paul II said, “In him, the divine sonship has become our inheritance. By God’s will, as adoptive sons we are coheirs of the eternal Son, called to participate in the life of God, in eternal happiness in him.”
“His right hand has won victory for him, his holy arm,” the psalmist sings. Let me remain with you today, Lord, to see and understand that you are the victor.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.