Homily for the 5th Sunday of Easter, May 3, 2026. Gospel of St. John 14:1-12. Theme: Living With Trust Not Trouble
There’s a heck of a lot in today’s Gospel that could provide us with countless hours of reflection but I am going to limit myself to Jesus’ opening words that begin with, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Notice the timing of when He said this. It was at the Last Supper when He was well aware that He was about to undergo His cruel Passion. And He knew the terrible havoc this would wreak on his companions. On their part, the disciples saw the seriousness on the Lord’s face and heard it in His voice. They sensed that something terribly upsetting was coming their way. It’s important to realize that it was within this setting that Jesus was inviting them to focus on faith and keep their hearts untroubled.
I think what He was counseling was to not let the stress and worry that so easily fill our minds descend into our inner selves where it can rob us of peace. He knows we obviously can’t control what goes on around us so He is telling us to take charge of what happens within us. The many external disturbances of life can only settle in our hearts if we stubbornly hold onto the idea that we are in control of everything. In other words, the stress in our heads becomes stress in our hearts when we persist in the idea that we can fix any situation and solve any problem based on our own merits. And the reason this stresses us out is because deep down in the very recesses of our being we know that this isn’t true! A simple reality check should remind us that there are things we struggle with that are not of our own doing and so they also cannot be of our own undoing. We may be powerless in the face of these sufferings but we are definitely not helpless.
And this brings us to Jesus' next few words in today’s Gospel, “Have faith in God; have faith also in me.” Here is where we find the help we need to prevent head-stress from becoming heart-stress. He is inviting us to trust in God (He means the Father) and to likewise trust in Him (because, as we say, “like Father, like Son”). In the Bible, the word “faith” can also be translated as “trust” because the original Greek word means both things. In our American slang we have the same double-meaning for these words. When we tell someone “I believe in you” we are saying in effect, “I trust in your ability”. And so we turn to Jesus and tell Him, “I believe in You…I trust in your ability to help me.” This attitude isn’t a kind of placebo to get through a tough time; nor is it a kind of mind-game to help us transcend the issue at hand. Quite the opposite, faith means dealing with our reality head-on, but confident that God will enable us to face it and get through it in a constructive positive way. The first step in embarking upon this challenge of faith is to mindfully and intentionally surrender ourselves to the power and the care of God. In other words, to trust in Him.
But we need to be patient and realize that learning to trust isn’t something that happens overnight or without effort. We know that this is true from our own everyday human experiences. The people in our lives whom we have learned to trust have earned that level of confidence from us not simply by their words, but by their actions. They have shown us in times of difficulty and vulnerability that they were trustworthy by being with us, being there for us and loving us no matter what. Jesus was (and still is) exactly like that. He freely gave up the glory of Heaven and became a man precisely to be with us, to share the kind of life we live with its joys as well as its struggles, and then even more so to die for us. And beyond that, He has promised to remain with us until the end of time and to send the Holy Spirit, whom He called “power from on high”, to dwell within us so that we would never feel helpless and abandoned by God! What more could He do to earn our trust?
Upon hearing all this we might be tempted to respond, "easier said than done!” And we’d be right because learning to let go and trust in God IS easier said than done. But the fact is that it CAN be done. But it’s not going to happen overnight. We also say, “anything worth having is worth working for” and this is surely true about a vibrant trust-based relationship with Jesus Christ. We need to work on deepening our personal relationship with Him through daily prayer from the heart, through becoming familiar with His word and deeds in the Gospels, and through the Eucharist in which He comes to abide within us. And as we work on this relationship we will gradually see that we ARE becoming more trustful, we ARE becoming more calm, and we ARE becoming more peaceful inside. We will grow in our experience of that “power from on high” which strengthens us to deal with all these many ups and downs of daily life.
But the thing to remember in all this is that Christ never ever pushes Himself into our lives against our will. He desires a relationship that is rooted in love and love demands freedom. So He waits to be freely asked and then once we invite Him in, His care and concern for even the smallest things in our lives become manifest in clearly discernible ways. This doesn’t mean that our issues and struggles will suddenly just disappear. Nor does it mean that our health or financial situation will change for the better overnight. But it does mean that God will see to it that our needs are met in one way or another because, believe it or not, He wants nothing more than to see us happy, both in this world and in the next.
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