Last Supper Discourse

Today's Reflections 

         

Last Supper Discourse

Jn 14:6-14

⁶Jesus said to [Thomas], “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” ⁸Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” ⁹Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. ¹¹Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves. ¹²Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”

The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. What people do reveals more about them than what they say. This is a human reality that remains untwisted and unswept by the “roaring current of change,” says Alvin Toffler, author of the bestseller Future Shock. The Roman poet Ovid gives this criterion in assessing people: no need for words, trust deeds. Jesus, in Matthew, conveys the same message when he says, “By their fruits you shall know them” (Mt 7:20). We judge people by the quality of their lives rather than by the persuasiveness of their speech.

Jesus speaks only what the Father tells him, and he does only what the Father bids him to do. In Jesus, the Redeemer God is active and, in conforming himself with the will of the Father, the face of God is also fully revealed in him and through him.

“A man of words and not of deeds

is like a garden full of weeds”

(James Howell).