Friday of the 4th week of Eastertide
First Reading — Acts 13:26–33
God has fulfilled his promise by raising Jesus from the dead
Paul stood up in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia, held up a hand for silence and began to speak:
‘My brothers, sons of Abraham’s race, and all you who fear God, this message of salvation is meant for you. What the people of Jerusalem and their rulers did, though they did not realise it, was in fact to fulfil the prophecies read on every sabbath. Though they found nothing to justify his death, they condemned him and asked Pilate to have him executed. When they had carried out everything that scripture foretells about him they took him down from the tree and buried him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who had accompanied him from Galilee to Jerusalem: and it is these same companions of his who are now his witnesses before our people.
‘We have come here to tell you the Good News. It was to our ancestors that God made the promise but it is to us, their children, that he has fulfilled it, by raising Jesus from the dead. As scripture says in the second psalm: You are my son: today I have become your father.’
Responsorial Psalm — Psalm 2:6–11
‘It is I who have set up my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.’
I will announce the decree of the Lord:
The Lord said to me: ‘You are my Son.
It is I who have begotten you this day.
‘Ask and I shall bequeath you the nations,
put the ends of the earth in your possession.
With a rod of iron you will break them,
shatter them like a potter’s jar.’
Now, O kings, understand,
take warning, rulers of the earth;
serve the Lord with awe
and trembling, pay him your homage.
Gospel — John 14:1–6
I am the Way, the Truth and the Life
Jesus said to his disciples:
‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Trust in God still, and trust in me.
There are many rooms in my Father’s house;
if there were not, I should have told you.
I am going now to prepare a place for you,
and after I have gone and prepared you a place,
I shall return to take you with me;
so that where I am
you may be too.
You know the way to the place where I am going.’
Thomas said, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus said:
‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.
No one can come to the Father except through me.’
Reflection
Paul speaks with a clarity that removes distance. The resurrection is not presented as an idea to consider, but as a reality that confronts. Christ was rejected, killed, buried—and then raised. This is not symbolic language. It is the centre of everything. As the Catechism states, the Resurrection is the definitive confirmation of Christ’s identity and mission (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 638).
What is difficult is not understanding the claim.
It is accepting what it demands.
Because if Christ is risen, then truth is no longer something we shape around ourselves. It stands outside us. It calls us. And often, like those in Jerusalem, we can be close to it and still fail to recognise it. Not out of ignorance, but resistance.
In the Gospel, Jesus does not offer abstraction. He does not describe a system or a method. He says, “I am the Way.” Which means the path to God is not managed—it is followed. This reflects a deeper reality: faith is not merely assent to truths, but trust in a person (cf. CCC 150).
Thomas’ question is direct, and it exposes something familiar. We want clarity before commitment. We want to understand before we move. But Christ reverses that order. He does not give a full explanation—He gives Himself.
And this is where growth becomes honest.
Not in having everything resolved, but in deciding whether you will trust Him in what is unresolved. Whether you will follow without full visibility. Whether you will allow your direction to be shaped, not by certainty, but by relationship.
Because the way is not something you figure out.
It is someone you follow.
One line to carry today:
The way forward is not a plan—it is a person you choose to trust.
