Saint Philip & Saint James
Vol. 57 No. 23 The Fourth Sunday after Easter May 3, 2026
In the yearly commemorations of the Apostles, the feast of Philip and James on May 1st falls in Eastertide; and like the gospels of Eastertide, the Gospel is drawn from the Gospel of John—from our Lord’s discourse at the Last Supper (John 14:1–14). Its opening words are familiar from the Burial of the Dead: “Let not your heart be troubled…” Just hours before his arrest, Jesus speaks of his departure to the Father. The disciples are shaken. They have staked their future on him; and a future without Jesus seems no future at all. Into that fear—of loss, of absence, of death—our Lord speaks comfort.
The comfort he offers is the promise of a home: “In my Father’s house are many mansions… I go to prepare a place for you.” But what is home? It is the place where we are truly known and welcomed, accepted and loved—a place that fits us, where we may at last be ourselves without reserve. All human life, in one way or another, is a search for such a home.
Again and again, we think we have found it: in love, in work, in achievement, in travel, in the securing of some long-desired good. Yet the satisfaction is never quite what we expect. These things may be good; but they are not enough. It turns out that they are only inns along the road, not the true destination. They awaken desire more than they fulfill it. As Augustine of Hippo famously put it, “Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” Finite goods cannot quiet an infinite longing. The home we seek is the Father’s house—and therefore also the home of the Son. That is the promise: “that where I am, there ye may be also.” To be at home there is to share in the Son’s own place in the Father’s love: to be known, welcomed, and delighted in as he is. Nothing less will satisfy the human heart, because nothing less is what we were made for.
But how can this be? How can the finite enter the infinite? How can sinners dwell with a holy God? We glimpse the goal—but where is the way? Here, the disciples speak for us. Thomas says, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” And Jesus answers with words that stand at the very center of the Christian faith: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
He is not merely a teacher or guide who points the way; he is himself the way—the “new and living way” opened through his own flesh (Hebrews 10:20), the one Mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5). In his death and resurrection, he bears our sin and removes our guilt, bringing us out of judgment into favor, so that “we have boldness and access with confidence” (Ephesians 3:12). Because he is the way, he is also the truth and the life: in him, the fullness of God is given to meet the deepest need of mind and heart.
And so his departure from the world by the cross and resurrection is not loss, but gain. He goes to the Father in order to bring us there. Even now, by faith, we have a foretaste of that home; and at the last, we shall enter it in fullness: “we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). This hope does not leave us unchanged. It purifies, it orders, it strengthens us in the present; for “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed” (Romans 8:18).
And more still: the way that leads us to the Father is also the way by which the Father and the Son come to us. Through the gift of the Spirit, whose coming we shall commemorate on Pentecost, they make their dwelling with the faithful even now (John 14:23). The home we seek is not only promised at the end of the journey—it has already begun.
So the question with which the Gospel leaves us is not abstract, but personal. If Christ himself is the way, then to seek the way is to seek him; to follow the way is to follow him; to arrive at the end is to be with him. The promise of a place in the Father’s house is given—but it is given in him, and nowhere else. To unite ourselves to him by all means possible is the means by which we claim that promise.
Thou art the way, the truth, the life;
Grant us that way to know,
That truth to keep, that life to win,
Whose joys eternal flow.