Jesus answered them, "Do you believe now?
Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived
when each of you will be scattered to his own home
and you will leave me alone.
But I am not alone, because the Father is with me.
I have told you this so that you might have peace in me.
In the world you will have trouble,
but take courage, I have conquered the world."
John 16:31-33
Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived
when each of you will be scattered to his own home
and you will leave me alone.
But I am not alone, because the Father is with me.
I have told you this so that you might have peace in me.
In the world you will have trouble,
but take courage, I have conquered the world."
John 16:31-33
Jesus knows what’s going to happen to him. And he knows that the disciples—his friends, the ones who had left their homes and their families for him, who had walked with him and called him “Teacher,” and “Lord”—will desert him during his time of trial and suffering. Can there be anything more painful than knowing that those you love the most will abandon you when you need them the most?
Yet knowing the worst, rather than reproach them Jesus offers the disciples comfort and forgiveness.
They haven’t even done it yet. But Jesus has already forgiven them. And as if forgiveness were not enough, he gives them words of comfort to remember when the time comes that they realize the extent of what they have done:
You will leave me alone. But I am not alone, because the Father is with me. I have told you this so that you might have peace in me.
Sometimes when we’re overwhelmed by our sins, by our guilt over what we have or have not done, we lose sight of the fact that what we have done is far less important than what Christ has done for us, or what God wants for us. Sometimes, like the Ephesian disciples in the first reading from Acts, it seems we only know that preliminary, incomplete “Baptism of John,” the “baptism of repentance,” rather than the full baptism of the Spirit which brings the peace of Christ and guarantees that we are never alone.
So whose disciple are you? John’s or Jesus’?
Yet knowing the worst, rather than reproach them Jesus offers the disciples comfort and forgiveness.
They haven’t even done it yet. But Jesus has already forgiven them. And as if forgiveness were not enough, he gives them words of comfort to remember when the time comes that they realize the extent of what they have done:
You will leave me alone. But I am not alone, because the Father is with me. I have told you this so that you might have peace in me.
Sometimes when we’re overwhelmed by our sins, by our guilt over what we have or have not done, we lose sight of the fact that what we have done is far less important than what Christ has done for us, or what God wants for us. Sometimes, like the Ephesian disciples in the first reading from Acts, it seems we only know that preliminary, incomplete “Baptism of John,” the “baptism of repentance,” rather than the full baptism of the Spirit which brings the peace of Christ and guarantees that we are never alone.
So whose disciple are you? John’s or Jesus’?
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