“And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father. At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father. His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God. Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” John 16:23-33
As the text moves forward in John 16 Jesus once again reminds his disciples that he is about to return to his Father and his departure will have a permanence about it: he will no long reside visibly, bodily in and amongst his Church. There will be two departures and he is preparing his disciples for both occasions. His first departure will be before the cock crows when he will be snatch from among them, identified and betrayed with a kiss from the traitor Judas. Things move quickly from the moment he is taken into custody: he will have been tried and found guilty of blasphemy against the God of Israel, then afflicted beyond our imagination, he will be beaten with a scourge, and by 9:00 a.m. he will be nailed to the Cross between two thieves. His disciples will scatter like spiders, but a few of those men and women he addressed in the upper room will return and watch all this at a distance. But not too much at a distance because they will witness specific details surrounding his execution and make a point of memorizing his dying words. By sundown, eight or so hours from the time these words were spoken, he will be dead, taken down from the Cross, not by disciples, but by two men who cared about public decency and the liturgical protocol of Israel. That will be his first departure and those events will give an existential urgency to his first words in John 16:
“They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me. But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you.”
The reason Jesus did not reveal the mutual suffering that his disciples will share with him is because he was with them bodily and as long as that was the case he would permit no one to harm them and that was exactly the case. Can you think of any of Jesus’ disciples who were harmed while he was still with them, prior to his crucifixion? No. None of them were harmed and in fact some people who were being harmed, he rescued and they frequently became his faithful disciples after that, like for example the woman he rescued from stoning in Jerusalem. What that means for his Church — that as long as he was with them bodily he protected them — that is a reality that we have not explored very much but I would suggest that it is not by accident, but intentional so that he could say to his Father in prayer of John 17 that he had not lost one of those the Father had given to him except for Judas whom he will referred to as “the son of ruination,” or “the son of calamity and destruction,” and that loss has something to do with the fulfillment of the Scriptures. Well, regardless of that bit about the “fulfillment of Scriptures,” it is abundantly clear that Judas consciously and intentionally decided to betray Jesus and then took action to bring his plan to fruition. But as long as Jesus was with his little flock no harm came to them and had not Judas made up his mind to stab him in the back he surely would have come under his care and protection as well. The Good Shepherd protects his sheep, he will not run from the wolf or the lion but he will place himself in harm’s way, he will stand between his sheep and anyone or anything thing that intends to do them harm. In short he will lay down his life for his sheep. If we take the fact that he lost none of his disciples to malevolent forces while he was with them, it is appropriate to take that historic reality to have a mystical meaning which is that Jesus is fierce, potent, indeed omnipotent when it comes to protecting Holy Mother Church and her children. There is no force, in life, or death; no angel, no prince, no menace, not from the past, not in the present, not coming in the future that can separate or disenfranchise you from your destiny in Christ.
“For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father…”
The second departure will come after his resurrection and the great forty days when he taught and appeared to his Church at various times and for various lengths of time. It is the second departure that enfolds us and because of that this teaching in John 16 has an immediate significance for us. Namely that his bodily absence led to the persecutions, the abuse, and the martyrdom of Christians after his ascension back to this Father, albeit we may trust that our future, our final destiny is safe in Jesus’ perfect care. That is the first meaning to keep in mind. The second meaning is that our relation to the Father has now in a sense matured so that we are now required, compelled by Christ, to approach the throne of the heavenly grace with confidence knowing that Jesus has completed his mission and from the Ascension on we have a mission from Jesus which is in a way looks a lot like Jesus’ mission from his Father:
“And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.”
The fulfillment of our joy is not a matter of having our personal wants satisfied as though what matters in life our own private circumscribe happiness, but rather our joy, our delight, our benediction and blessing is to do the will of Jesus just as his joy and delight was to do the will of his Father. And I submit to you that we most perfectly do the will of Jesus when we celebrate the Holy Communion, the great gift of the Sacrament of the Altar. Furthermore when Jesus says that, “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you,” there is no request that we may lay before God the Father that is dearer to his own heart, dearer to his Son’s heart, or dearer to the heart of the Church than the request we place before him in the Eucharist:
“Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.”
This is our perfect joy and perfect happiness as well as our perfect shelter from the storm:
“That word above all earthly powers,
No thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours
Through Him who with us sideth:
Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill:
God’s truth abideth still,
His Kingdom is forever.”
At the end of his discourse in chapter 16 the disciples are moved by his words to a state of bliss and declared their renewed conviction that he is indeed from the God:
“Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.”
Not only did they profess their loyalty to him and their conviction that Jesus has come from God, but they also attribute divine qualities to him:
“Now are we sure that thou knowest all things…”
But Jesus finally brings them back to the reality of the moment the horror that is at the door waiting for their exist:
“Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
It would appear from the narrative that Christ’s Church fell to pieces before it got started but that is not the end of the Church because the Church is his Church and nothing, absolutely nothing will prevail against her. As fragile as she may be, as vulnerable as her children may be, Jesus has overcome the world. Not only has he overcome the world, but he has returned to his Father, to his natural abode in the bosom of the Father and that means that those who are in Jesus, who are participating in Jesus through the grace of baptism, are also where he is — in the bosom of the Father: