5th Sunday of Easter 2026 -

"Do not let your hearts be troubled."
Jesus says this to his disciples on the night before he dies. They are scared. They don't understand where he is going. Thomas blurts out what they're all thinking: "Lord, we don't know where you are going. How can we know the way?"

Jesus gives one of the most stunning answers in all of Scripture: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life."
Not I will show you the way. Not I know the truth. But I am — present tense, total identification. The destination and the road are the same person. We live in a world that is desperately searching for the way. We are flooded with paths: numerous algorithms that promise to optimize our lives and steer us on our path, ideologies that promise meaning, wellness programs that promise peace. Everyone has a map. But Jesus doesn't hand us a map. He says: Walk with me. I am the road beneath your feet. Thomas's question is truly representative of the human condition: He doesn't pretend to understand. He interrupts and says, I'm lost. And Jesus doesn't rebuke him for it. He answers him and  all of them — with loving tenderness: "Don't let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me."

Friends, I must confess, that no matter how many times, I've heard that, I've read that, I've proclaimed that, I feel just as lost and confused as Thomas. I feel lost, I cannot find the way and I am full of anxiety.  But Jesus speaks to me:  "Don't let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me."

Here we are, still in the Easter season, celebrating the Resurrection, but sometimes in the busy-ness of ordinary life a month later,  in May, with all its noise, war, disease, financial upheaval, just to name a few, we can forget that we are a Resurrection people. We can go back to being troubled. We can forget the cornerstone.

Today Jesus speaks to us exactly as he spoke to Thomas and Philip and the rest of them in that upper room. In every anxiety, every confusion, every moment when we feel lost and cannot see the road ahead — he says the same thing:

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me."

Jesus does not promise that life will be easy, or the road will always be clear. But promises that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life And He is not going anywhere without you.

Trust the way. Walk with him. Be a living stone as Peter declares to us. Make sure no one at your table is forgotten, as we hear in Acts. Indeed the diaconate to which I belong is a life of service.

That is the Resurrection life. That is the way.
Peace.

​Deacon Michel