“We will come and make our dwelling with them” (John 14:24).

The story of Catherine of Siena (1347- 1380) is far too fascinating to try and summarize in this blog, and it has yet to be mined for its implications for our contemporary church. This 14th-century laywoman affiliated with the Dominican Order was a mystic, social activist, community leader, provocative friend of popes and princes, mediator, lover of God and of the church. She lived her brief 33 years during one of the most chaotic and difficult times in European history, an age of critical transition marked by plague, internecine warfare and almost fatal divisions within the Catholic church.

Because of her personal holiness and authority, Catherine served as a kind of still point for a culture in rapid centrifugal expansion in danger of disintegration. How did she endure this? Her integrity was grounded in what she described in her letters and dialogues as a “mystical marriage” with Jesus, the source of all unity in love.

Dominican Sr. Suzanne Noffke, author of four volumes of Catherine’s letters and other books about the saint, cites something that perhaps captures the source of Catherine’s ability to play the role she did in the church. Catherine once said that she wanted to be the same person before God, herself and her neighbor. That fusion of identities and the direct self-possession it afforded her were how she was able to remain poised in the eye of the storm. Like a spiritual Archimedes, she had a place to stand from which she could then move the world. The work of aligning her own heart, mind, soul and strength in God and in compassion for others was accomplished within the interior cell of obedience (which means "listening") she had maintained from her childhood. She was in love with God, the source and center of all reality, all beauty and truth.

Does not Jesus offer each of us this same self-confidence and centering in today’s Gospel reading? If we keep his word, Jesus promises us that he and his Abba — the source and center of all Being — will come and dwell with us. This is Christian spirituality 101.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1).

Simon and Garfunkel’s song “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” topped the charts for six weeks in 1970, capturing a generation’s belief that love can overcome suffering and that human friendship can save someone who is lost and alone.

Such confidence is built into our hearts, but experience teaches us that human love is often not enough to rescue so many troubled souls who fall like sparrows, victims of predators, their own fragility and naïveté, succumbing to the hidden, inner downward spirals of despair and delusion, seduction and enslavement. Ask any parent who has lost a child of any age to drugs, dangerous misadventure they cannot extricate themselves from, relationships that carry them into a world of hurt and hurting that becomes unbearable, for them and for everyone who tries to rescue them.

Jesus is the Bridge over troubled waters. This is the meaning of the Incarnation, that in his humanity he absorbed every experience of temptation and triumph, agony and ecstasy, and even — in Paul’s shocking words – “became sin that we might become the grace of God (2 Cor 5:21). By embracing every human experience, Jesus transformed it in himself. His journey to Jerusalem was one long, intimate encounter with every kind of human suffering and evil, so that by the time he arrived on Calvary he had taken on the damage of the leper, the crippled, blind, deaf and dumb, demoniac and outcast, heretic and criminal, dying betrayed, abandoned and rejected. But in his death, he carried the full burden of human sin across the threshold of grace into the loving hands of God. "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

In that moment a bridge is laid down for us, between humanity and divinity, earth and heaven, body and spirit, revealing our path to reunion with God. When we are lost and alone, have exhausted every other way forward, the bridge will appear. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he says. “Trust me; I have been there, done that, suffered it all, and I am here for you. I am the way home.”

“Whoever sees me sees the one who sent me” (John 12:44).

The human face is a unique projection of the soul, the “who-ness” of each person. It can glow and reveal or withdraw and hide. A living face is exquisite and versatile; in death, the human face, even to a soul mate, only accentuates the terrible sense of absence. We search a lifeless mask, but find only the last known address of someone who has gone away.

John’s Gospel, authored by one called the “beloved disciple,” is the most mystical of the four Gospels. The author often stops his narrative as through breathless, overcome with the mystery he is trying to convey. Long poetic discourse like the one excerpted in today’s passage from Chapter 12, struggle to explain the divinity of Jesus showing through his humanity. The image of the Father is revealed in the Son. Family resemblance is mere metaphor for an even more astonishing claim that the face of Jesus is the human face of God, the eternal Mystery embodied in space and time, the fullness of revelation appearing in history, with cosmic implications.

This claim is repeated in the opening words of the first letter of John: “What was there from the beginning, we heard it, we saw it with our own eyes and touched it with our own hands; this is our theme, the word of life.”

Our ability to see beyond parable to mystery relies on our personal experience of encountering the same truth in every human face. When the eyes of love meet the look of love, the very source of life, the face of God, looks back at us. This glimpse, like the wafer and sip we receive each time we go to Communion, is nothing less than God's pledge to us of eternal life. To believe this is to live now the glory that is to come and to be ourselves the face of God's love to the world.

“He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” (John 10:3).

Jesus’ relationship with his disciples is further explored with the images of shepherd, sheepfold and sheep gate. The practice was for separate flocks to be held in a common gated enclosure for the night. In the morning, each shepherd would retrieve his or her sheep by calling to them, because they would only respond to that specific voice. This familiarity between flock and shepherd was what prevented strangers or others intent on stealing sheep from getting the sheep to follow them instead.

John’s Gospel, written last, perhaps as late as the year 90 or even into the following century, would be remembering Jesus but also applying this memory to their own situation. This no doubt included the presence of false prophets and distorted versions of the still emerging faith in Jesus. As is the case today, many so-called religious leaders were there to benefit themselves, fleece the flock and ended up misleading trusting people vulnerable to their deceptions.

To mature in our Christian identity, we must begin by learning to recognize the voice of Jesus. We do this by prayer, gaining some familiarity with the scriptures and by our participation with other people seeking the same maturity. It is hard to imagine this growth apart from belonging to some form of intentional faith community like a parish or small Christian group that convenes regularly to share questions and experiences about our common hunger to know God and live meaningful lives. This is faith formation. The world is filled with wolves, we might say, and the most dangerous ones are the ones we create ourselves out of delusion and self-deception. But the voice of Christ never stops calling us: "I have come that you might have life, life to the full."