Daily Reflection Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter

We are in the final week of the Easter season and on Thursday we will come to the end of the gospel of John’s five chapter long account of the Last Supper we have followed throughout most of Easter, five chapters that consist almost entirely of Jesus speaking to his distressed Apostles.
 
Today we hear the end of chapter 16. Jesus has just finished telling them that he is about to leave this world and return to his Father. The disciples attempt a brave front, claiming that they now understand him and believe that he is from God. However, the Lord is fully aware (as John always depicts him) of what is about to transpire. He bluntly tells them that they will all imminently abandon him (“You will be scattered each to his own home”), leaving him alone (“But I am not alone”). And as he did at the end of chapter 14, Jesus tells them that he reveals this to them so that afterwards they may remember and find peace in that although Jesus very well knew their weaknesses from the beginning, he never abandoned them, never ceased to love them and pray for them.
 
That is important, for the disciples are all about to enter a very dark night indeed (as Jesus told the chief priests at Gethsemane, “This is your hour, and the power of darkness!” Lk 22:53) when Jesus’ rejection by the mob and the scandal of his death on the cross will be like a knife in their hearts. They would all flee at his arrest, Peter will deny him three times and none but his mother and the other women (and the beloved disciple in John) will be at the cross. John tells us that they returned to what they were doing before Jesus called them (where the resurrected Jesus finds them on the shore of Lake Galilee in John 21), having abandoned any hopes they once held and with every dream they had crushed.
 
This should leave us all greatly comforted, however. For how many times have we felt ourselves somehow distant from God’s love? How many times have we felt doubt or hesitation in trusting in God’s power to save? How many times feeling alone and confused, refusing to put all our hope in the Lord? Like the poor, foolish apostles at the Last Supper, so confused and bewildered, frightened and agonizing, Jesus is always ready to lift up our hearts. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus tells us as he told them that terrible night. “I will not leave you orphans.” Jesus will make his great prayer to the Father in chapter 17 where he asks the Father, “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.” Feelings will come and go. Sometimes our fears can get the best of us, our worries overwhelm us. We fall back and wonder, are we lost after all? Are we to blame? It is then that we hear Jesus with great love and tenderness say to us by our sides and close to our hearts, “Have faith in God and faith in me! If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
 
Jesus is the good shepherd who always leaves the ninety-nine to search for the one lost sheep, carrying it back on his shoulders and rejoicing “over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray.” When we are plagued by our own weaknesses and fears, let us finally hear Jesus encourage us and strengthen us as he again assures us, “In the world you will have many difficulties. But be of good cheer for I have overcome the world!”