Homily: Fifth Sunday of Easter

May 3, 2026

My dear brothers and sisters, as we are gradually approaching the solemnity of Ascension, when our Lord Jesus Christ after completing His good work on earth, went back to heaven, the Church today presents to us some of the farewell speeches of Jesus before He left His disciples. One thing we always see in Jesus’ interaction with His disciples is the honesty with which He related to them. Jesus never seduced with deception or bribed anyone to believe in Him and be His follower. He was always plain, straightforward and sincere concerning the cost of discipleship. For instance, in Matt. 16:24, Jesus bluntly told His disciples, “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

In that same pattern of His straightforwardness and sincerity, before He left His disciples, Jesus made this very statement that we read in today’s gospel: “Do not let your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me, in my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” Jesus was not saying this to woo them or lure them or induce them into following Him. During His Last Supper in Jn 17:24, He knelt down and continued praying in a similar way, “Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”

Brothers and sisters, Jesus is not a deceiver, He is not a joker, He is not a fraudster. If He called this world a place of preparation and cross and promised us a place of glory that He has prepared, we must take His word very seriously so that we will not be losers. Jesus tells us in today’s gospel, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Jesus is the way we must follow, the truth we must believe, the life we must embrace.

Jesus is the Way. We know that in daily life, sometimes the way that leads to our destinations can have a lot of challenges. The road can be far, mountainous, lonely, filled with traffic lights, speed cameras and constant inspection of the OPP preventing us from flying like rockets. Yet we normally patiently dance to the tune of the law and continue our journey following the way. Even the way of Jesus through life was not one of His own choice, but the one the Father had chosen for Him. He followed it unswervingly and humbly, even to death, death on the Cross. By so doing, Jesus became the way for us. Only a loving acceptance of Jesus the way like He did to the Father will lead us to God the Father.

Jesus is the Truth. In John 18:37-38, Jesus standing before Pilate told him, “for this I came into the world to testify to the truth,” and Pilate asked him, “what is truth?” This question “what is truth” has remained a serious philosophical question for ages, what is truth? We might trust in a human being that he/she possesses the truth, in the end, we might get a heart attack because of disappointment and betrayal. We might trust a medical procedure to save us but instead of helping us to return back to our home from the hospital, the same procedure might even take our body to the morgue or crematorium. We might trust a government policy, only for us to discover at the long run, some hidden fraudulent and selfish interests behind some of the policies. Wherein lies the Truth that can never disappoint and endures forever. It is in Jesus the Truth.

Jesus is the Life. Someone once said that if you have hundred problems, that if you get a serious health challenge, the health challenge will displace and reduce all those problems into one single problem which is ill health. Similarly in life, we may have plenty aspirations, goals and targets. We want to go to the moon, our next summer holidays will be in a cruise boat, we will first fly to France, from there sail to Germany and enter Austria and Czech Republic and then use submarine and enter Poland and cruise forward to Belarus. Brothers and sisters, all these are possible because we have life and that life is Jesus. John 15:5, for cut off from me you can do nothing. In all, the gospel of reading of today call on us to examine which way we are following, which theory are we believing, which life are we living. The word of God that is eternal forever reminds us that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.