5th Sunday of Easter (Jn. 14:1-12) “Show US the Way”

            Everyone has two personas.  We have that person that we show to the world. We polish that persona. We want people to know us as confident.  We want people to think well of us.  But then we have that other persona which is the one that is hidden from the world. We might say someone’s life is an open book but then they do something totally unexpected, good or bad. And we hear people say, “I guess I really didn’t know them.”

                We might remember Dag Hammerskjold who was born in 1905 in Sweden.  Hammerskjold was born into an influential family.  His father was the prime minister of Sweden.  He received the best education.  Hammerskjold was taught from a young age about the positive aspects of public service. He held several diplomatic jobs until he eventually ended up at the United Nations.  He was elected Secretary General in 1953. The youngest person ever to hold the position.  He was involved in many negotiations to end conflicts and bring peace throughout the world.  He was widely respected.  He was thought to be a man of firm convictions, a very ethical man.

                Unfortunately, he died in 1961 when a plane he was riding in crashed in Rhodesia.  He was trying to negotiate an end to a war in Congo and doing shuttle diplomacy.  The world mourned his unexpected death.  When his executers looked through his papers they found a spiritual journal.  All through his life Hammerskjold had a deep conversation with God.  His book was entitled “Markings.” The book is considered a spiritual classic.  No one knew he was such a committed Christian.  No one, we might say, really knew him.

                As we read the Gospel today, we get the sense that the apostles felt like they didn’t really know Jesus.  Even though they had heard Jesus preach, even though they had watched what he did in ministry, both Thomas and Phillip plead with Jesus asking him not to go. “We really don’t know the way.”  Somehow, they felt there was something more that they needed to know.

                Thomas and Phillip might be criticized for their obtuseness but if we look at the Gospel closely, we can surmise that the other Apostles were also unsure of the road ahead of them.  But they didn’t have the honesty to question Jesus.  We probably feel the same way.  How many questions would we ask Jesus?  We might have read scripture our whole life.  We might have listened to every religious talk that we could.  But if we are honest, we would probably say that we don’t understand everything about our Christian faith.             

                One of the most intelligent Christians of all time was St. Augustine.  He has gotten a lot of attention lately since Pope Leo was elected Bishop of Rome because Leo belongs to the Augustinian order.  Augustine was a great Philosopher.  He was an accomplished Theologian.  But he struggled within himself because he felt like he didn’t know as much as he would like.

                A popular story about Augustine is that one night he had a dream.  He was walking along a beach. He noticed a little boy with a bucket.  The boy dipped the bucket in the ocean.  He would then take the salt water to the hole dug in the sand.  Augustine asked the boy, “What are you trying to do?”  The boy said, “I am trying to put all the ocean water into this hole." Augustine laughed at the boy saying, “That is impossible.” The boy said to Augustine, “It is just as impossible as you believing that you are ever going to know all there is to know about God.”

                We are never going to know everything there is to know about our Lord.  Much remains hidden.  But we shouldn’t despair because new insights can come to us all the time. We need only pay attention. God is full of surprises.  When we accept that God’s mystery is much bigger than we will ever be able to grasp we will be awed by God.  If we are awed by the greatness of God, there isn’t despair but there is usually great consolation.