Describing God

By KATE BLAIN- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

Describe yourself. Are you a left-handed boy who loves movies and pizza? A Spanish girl who rollerblades, tells silly jokes and collects stuffed animals? If you're reading this, you're probably Catholic and American, too.

When Jesus was alive as a person like us, He described Himself in lots of ways -- some of them very different than how we talk about ourselves. In this week's Gospel (John 14:1-12), He names a few things about Himself.

"I am the way, the truth and the life," Jesus told His disciples. "No one comes to God the Father except through me." "Show us God the Father," Philip the Apostle said. Jesus answered, "If you've seen me, you've seen my Father. I am in Him and He is in me."

Your description of yourself probably includes things like where you were born and what you like to do. Jesus' was a little different: He called Himself "the way, the truth and the life":

* Jesus was "the way" because the way to get close to God was by following Him.

* He called Himself "the truth" because He was the only person who really knew about God and heaven; everyone else was just guessing!

* And Jesus was "the life" because if people followed Him, they'd get to live forever with God in heaven.

One way people describe themselves is by how much they're like their family. You might say, "My dad is Italian, and my mom is Irish, so I'm Irish-Italian;" or, "I have my father's nose and my mother's brown eyes."

Jesus did that, too. He said that if we thought about what He was like, we'd get a good idea of what God the Father is like: loving toward people, sometimes strict but caring about the whole world. Jesus' description of God didn't include eye color or favorite things, but it was pretty interesting anyway!