GOSPEL REFLECTION, MONDAY, 7TH WEEK OF EASTER, 13 MAY 2024

John 16:29-33.  Jesus’ extended farewell to his disciples concludes with the words of today’s reading.  He tells them that so far, he has been speaking to them in ’figures of speech,’ in his parables and in his other teachings.  The disciples did not always understand him despite their closeness to him over the past three years or so, and especially on their long journey to Jerusalem as Jesus taught them separately from the crowds that followed them.  Neither did the crowds always understand him.  They and the disciples are repeatedly faced with the question whether they would continue with him or not.  They were faced with the question of their faith, not just as intellectual agreements (what Cardinal Newman called ‘notional assent’).  They were faced with the question whether they trusted in Jesus at a deep spiritual level.  Jesus now told them that soon they would no longer hear his words to them in figures of speech, but deeply in their hearts.  They were not yet to know what this meant, but they would do so after the resurrection.  It was not simply an issue of ‘figures of speech’ in the time before the resurrection, but of Divine Revelation in the time after it.  Those going to Emmaus that first Easter evening, as well as the disciples, even in their hiding place, testify to this.  In the meantime, Jesus also told the disciples that they would soon be scattered back to their homes; they would be driven back into their inner beings there to come to terms with his teachings and with the stormy events of that Easter.  Then they would be faced with Divine Revelation, to which the response is deep faith and deep personal commitment to Jesus the Lord and to The Father’s having ‘spoken himself’ to them in Jesus the Word.