Daily Reflections ...

I wonder what image comes to mind when you read or hear this familiar text. If you search the web usually you will find a pathway through the desert, across mountains, through bushland or some other natural scene. Lovely as these scenes tend to be, they don’t capture the invitation that Jesus offers in today’s Gospel.

Jesus is not offering to show us a path to follow, he is offering himself who is “the Way”. We are not called to look down focussing on every step we take, but to look up. As the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, “Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus”.  

And when we do this we see the Jesus who ate and drank with outcasts, who healed and forgave, who laughed and cried, who welcomed women and children, who wept at the tomb of his friend, the Jesus who washed his followers’ feet and the Jesus who prayed constantly to the one he called Father. This, and only this, is the way of Jesus. When we as followers continue to do what Jesus did we will see the Father, we will know “the Truth” that sets us free and “the Life” that has no end.

by Kari Hatherell OSU