Daily Gospel Reflection
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May 16, 2025
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.
You have faith in God; have faith also in me.
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
If there were not,
would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back again and take you to myself,
so that where I am you also may be.
Where I am going you know the way.”
Thomas said to him,
“Master, we do not know where you are going;
how can we know the way?”
Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.”
In today’s reading, Jesus teaches us that he is the way, the truth, and the life. Christ radically contrasts the denial of an objective moral truth by modern atheistic existentialists, who echo Pilate’s insult of Jesus when he asked derisively, “What is truth?” (Jn 18:38) and the serpent’s temptation—eat this fruit and determine your own truth within a radically self-centered frame of reference. (Gn 3:1-6)
To be fair, we can’t help but be subjective creatures. With the emergence of nervous systems, life became aware of itself. We experience life through our subjectivity, a common pathway of the human condition. Love is the union of individual, intimate subjects, not objects. However, subjective experiences arise from objective elements. For example, the transcendent experience of music is mediated by sound waves through waveform, wavelength, and amplitude. From objective elements, the sublime emerges; a whole that transcends the sum of its parts and through which subjects encounter objective truth, goodness, and beauty. Lives lived well may encompass and balance subjective and objective.
Objective reality is permeated by these personal relationships. Even looking at the development of embryonic life shows its interconnectedness to all creation, as gill arches and other primordial structures gradually develop into human anatomy. What beauty there is in this deep relatedness to other creatures, extinct and extant, past and present. Relationality, not alienation, is intrinsic to life and is epitomized by the Trinity, a community of love among the three persons.
As a creation of the Creator, moral truth is objective; yet God is subject, as revealed by the infinite love among the three persons and extended to us through Christ. May we see Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life—intimately close through immanence, incarnation, and the Eucharist—in the least of those among us.
Prayer
No one knows the troubles we suffer, dear Lord, and sometimes our lives are hard to bear. Help us to trust in your consoling words, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” You know the depth of all people’s suffering and still you offered yourself on the cross to save us from ourselves, our pride, our self-centeredness. May the Spirit who raised you from the dead raise us up to serve others in their needs today. Alleluia!
Saint of the Day
St. Brendan is one of the great saints of Ireland. He is most famous for being the main character in the fantastic Irish sea-tale, the Navigatio, which tells of Brendan and 60 followers embarking on a voyage to find the "Isle of the Blessed"—the Garden of Eden, or paradise.
Brendan certainly was a real person, and it is possible that he even travelled with some followers to spread the good news. He was born in Tralee on the west coast of Ireland and was educated and befriended by several of the other saints of Ireland. He was ordained a priest and shortly afterwards gathered some followers and established a common life with them in a monastery.
The monastery he founded in Clonfert in 559 grew to include some 3,000 monks. It is said that an angel dictated to him the rule that guided that community.
It is possible that his travels took him to some of the British Isles. His Navigatio suggests that he even reached the Canary Islands, the Spanish archipelago off the coast of northwestern Africa.
A stained glass window dedicated to him colors the chapel in Dillon Hall—it depicts three yellow birds from the Canary Islands.
As we follow God on our journey of discipleship, let us ask Brendan for his boldness in following God beyond the borders of our own maps for our lives.
St. Brendan the Navigator, your faith led you to great adventures at the ends of the known world—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Brendan the Navigator is used with permission from Catholic Online. Last accessed March 11, 2025.