Jesus said to him [Thomas], “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.”

John 14:6

These words from John’s Gospel couldn’t be simpler. the way, the truth, and the life.

Seven simple words.

Despite the many distractions created by my children, these words and their implications burrowed into my mind and heart at Adoration last month.

During the same hour, they stared up at me from the pages of St. Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle. Then again in a scripture quote in Totus Tuus.

I’m accustomed to not hearing from God very often, whether due to His taciturn way of dealing with me or my own failure to listen, I can’t say. I suspect it’s a bit of both. Either way, I’m quite accustomed to it. That this little verse could move me so deeply, nearly to tears, was highly unordinary and remarkable.

For several minutes, I felt a tiny, infintessimally small fraction of Jesus’s sorrow. His sorrow at our rejection of those words:

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

We’ve replaced those words with something more akin to:

The My Way, the My Truth, and the My Life

This is the way – We’ve replaced Jesus's words with something more akin to my way, my truth, my life. Share on X

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Commit your WAY to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.

Psalm 37:5

What “way?” We are drowning in “ways.” There is a “way” for everything. Take one “way,” a way to eat. Keto, paleo, South Beach, Mediterranean, intermittent fasting, vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free – those just off the top of my head. These ways, generally speaking, have no moral consequence.

There are the ways of philosophies, creeds, political parties, candidates, and the innumerable and unnamed ways in which we proclaim our identities, our own “little ways,” through rampant virtue signaling.

Even among those who profess Jesus Christ as their Savior, there are more than 33,000 ways, or denominations (in heartbreaking contradiction to Jesus’s prayer “that they may all be one” (John 17:21)).

Within those churches, you’ll find every brand of cafeteria-style adherence to doctrine (because you have your truth, and I have mine).

Within the Catholic Church there are sub-“ways.” Grab a bucket of popcorn and watch self-proclaimed rad trad Catholics duke it out with fellow believers on #CatholicTwitter, if you can stomach it.

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Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH will make you free.”

John 8:31-32

The X-Files offered us a conundrum with its competing slogans, “The truth is out there,” and “Trust no one.”

What is truth without trust? Isn’t that the core of the division in the United States? We need fact-checkers for our fact-checkers. Truth is deemed so by those who shout the loudest, speak first, or suppress opposition.

We have to trust the arbiter of truth, otherwise truth is indiscernible from lies.

Is there a single institution in America left with unblemished moral authority, secular or religious? Whether by human institution or human involvement, each has failed in some measure. How can we discern truth without trust?

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It is the Spirit that gives LIFE, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and LIFE.

John 6:63

Life, an unparalleled gift, is paradoxically celebrated and denigrated from start to end, beginning with conception and contraception and culminating with natural death or euthanasia. In between are myriad offenses against life ranging from a simple lack of kindness to murder.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have LIFE, and have it abundantly.

John 10:10

How much it must hurt Jesus when, in our pridefulness, we choose another way, a more comfortable way, perhaps.

. . . when we choose a self-styled truth of our own making, one we’ve carefully crafted to soothe our conscience.

. . . when we reject life, acting in our arrogance as if we are the givers of life, on our terms, meting out who is worthy and who is unworthy.

Unless we measure every action against the perfect measure, Jesus Christ, we’ll come up short. Our nature, unless conformed to Christ, will mislead us. We make ourselves our own god, creating our own WAY, TRUTH, and LIFE.

His way is not the easy way. His truth is not the comfortable truth. “For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it.” Luke 9:24

Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

Matthew 25:13

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