“Do not let your hearts be troubled. “These opening words from Jesus in John 14 are among the most tender in all of Scripture. God continuous speaks to the human heart with an invitation toward trust. Jesus does not promise that faith will remove all causes of fear, Instead, he offers something deeper: a way of re-centring means remembering that our lives are anchored in something greater than ourselves. Our hearts are held within Divine Life. This is perhaps one of the hardest truths to remember, because so much of our lives is spent trying to become our own centre. We look for security in success, accomplishments, control, reputation, relationships, institutions, ideologies, or religious certainty. Yet Jesus gently reminds us that the centre was never meant to be us. The centre is God.
Jesus names this home as “my Father’s house,” and immediately expands our imagination by saying, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. “These words are often heard only as a promise about the life to come, but they speak just as powerfully to life here and now. For every troubled heart, there is a dwelling place in God: mercy when we have failed, forgiveness when shame has enclosed us, justice when the world feels disordered, compassion when suffering overwhelms us, healing when we are wounded, wisdom when we are confused, beauty when life has become dull, courage when fear has taken hold, intimacy when we feel alone, joy when heaviness has settled in, and above all, love. What makes this vision even more beautiful is that God does not invite us into this dwelling by erasing who we are. God honours the uniqueness of every person. Each life is singular, unrepeatable, and deeply known. God loves each person personally, intimately, uniquely. God loves us in our particularity-our history, our temperament, our wounds, our gifts, our unfinished growth. It softens the constant fear that we must become someone else in order to be loved. And from here, Jesus moves us into the deeper mystery of salvation itself.
Many of us were taught to think of salvation primarily as “going to heaven,” as though it were chiefly about securing a future destination. But Jesus describes it is not fundamentally about human achievement, but divine faithfulness. It is God refusing to abandon what God has created. There remains within many of us a quiet suspicion: Why would God love me? If salvation depended on flawless obedience, perfect virtue, or complete maturity in love, no one could stand. And if God could not love imperfect humanity, God could love no one at all-because imperfection is the common language of us all.
And here, we arrive again at Jesus’ words: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” The Christ way is the way of love. As we allow love to shape us inwardly, something begins to change in how we see. Love attracts love. When we become loving, we become capable of seeing love. This is why the deepest spiritual work is always interior. The primary task is allowing our own hearts to be transformed so that we may mirror back into the world the love already given to us by God. We came forth from God. We live in God. And through Christ, we are being drawn back into God.
- Lilly Pushpam PBVM
No comments:
Post a Comment