We have just listened to part of Jesus’ discourse to his apostles during the Last Supper in John’s Gospel. There is a sense in which it is timeless and is meant for all people of all times and so we read it during the Easter Season.
Today’s Gospel is well-known as it is often read at funerals. Jesus talks about our destination, heaven, a room in the Father’s house. We all want to arrive at that destination and Jesus is the way:
I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through
me.
Jesus emphasizes that he is the way: no one comes to the Father except through me. Jesus is the only way to the Father, the only way to heaven. Our salvation comes from Jesus; we do not earn our salvation. Our salvation is a gift to us from Jesus which he earned for us by his cross and resurrection. We have a funeral Mass for those who have died to ask our Father in heaven to grant them salvation because of Jesus’ cross and resurrection.
Christian publications have recently reported that someone asked an AI engine to evaluate five of the world’s major religions or belief systems to tell which has the most reasonable view of reality with the fewest assumptions. The same six questions were asked about each of the five major belief systems or religions, and it concluded that Christianity occupies a singular position because of its explanation of reality and existence and the universe. Its entire belief system is hinged on the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus whereas other belief systems are deficient by comparison either in their explanation of reality and the universe or rely on many hundreds of unproven assumptions. At least for now, one AI engine seems to agree in some way that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father except through him.
Jesus died and rose never to die again. No other religion can claim that their founder died and rose never to die again. Jesus is God in human form; no founder of any other religion is God in human form. Jesus was sinless; no founder of any other religion was sinless. Jesus didn’t just teach about God as the founders of other religions did but was the sacrifice in place of our sins to reconcile us with God. We know that Jesus is with us today working in so many ways among us. No founder of any other religion continues to work today among their followers. Jesus is indeed the way and the truth and the life, the way to our Father in heaven.
We could put it like this: Jesus is the way to the truth about God and truth about ourselves and the way to the fullness of life that God offers us. Jesus is the revelation of the Father but also reveals to us who we humans really are. One of the documents of Vatican II says Jesus fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling. (Gaudium et Spes 22; Catechism §1701). Karol Wojtyla, as Archbishop of Krakow, later Pope John Paul II, worked on a draft of that document (January to April 1965) and later in his writings as Pope used that phrase or a similar one many times: Christ reveals man to himself. Jesus reveals our purpose, our dignity, our identity, our high calling to love sacrificially as he loved us. Many times in his encyclicals, Pope John Paul II reminded us that we are made in the image of God. God has a plan for us and that plan is that we turn to God, longing to be in union with God. People could try to fill the longing for God with things, with consumerism, but having does not enrich us while knowing who we are under God enriches us. God’s call to us is to share in friendship with him. We can use different expressions to describe that friendship with God such as surrendering to God, giving a gift of ourselves to God, but they all mean sharing in friendship with God. It is a pity that in many ways our modern world seems to be denying the primacy of God and our need for friendship with God, our need to give ourselves to God, to give God what is his due. Giving God what is his due is acknowledging the truth of who we are, God’s creatures, and does not hinder our freedom because freedom does not mean doing everything or whatever we want as that would result in total chaos. Freedom is freedom in truth. Misusing freedom brings suffering because it is living in untruthfulness. Concerning the cash between living in truth and living in untruthfulness, in Evangelium Vitae Pope John Paull II wrote
We are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the ‘culture of death’ and the ‘culture of life.’ We find ourselves not only ‘faced with’ but … ‘in the midst of’ this conflict (Evangelium Vitae 28).
Without the truth that Jesus taught us, I wonder if our world might have self-destructed long before now.
Pope John Paul II wrote many times that Christ reveals man to himself. Jesus reveals our purpose, our dignity, our identity, our high calling to love sacrificially as he loved us. Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. He is the only one who died and rose never to die again.
© Fr. Tommy Lane 2026
This homily was delivered in a parish in Ireland.
More Homilies for the Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A
Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life 2023
Related Homilies: Jesus is the measure of truth 2025
Those who belong to the Truth listen to Jesus 2024
Jesus is the way to the Father 2022