A Place For Us

Leonard Bernstein's "There's a Place For Us" from West Side Story, has become an American classic with its comforting melody and strong thread of hope.  It is no surprise that today's gospel passage from John, 14: 1-6, is a popular staple at funerals with its consoling message that Jesus has prepared a place of each of us. Some preachers like to dwell on the "mansions" that await us as well as the golden cobbled stone streets, taking symbolic images a bit too literally.  Some translations tone down the mansions to dwelling places for this reason, but nevertheless that thought that there is a place for each of us and the Jesus will come for us and lead us there is most consoling to a dying person in hospice or to the family at a funeral Mass or service. When Thomas asked for the Way to this place, Jesus answered that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life.  (Jn 14;6).  We don't have to wait for death to release us to the "other side', we can have the close relationship we seek right here and now if we make him the focus and center of our lives. The Place for Us is right under our noses!
Bro. Rene