This, surely, is what it is all about: our reunion with God in a relationship perfectly restored in mutual delight and purpose, love and peace. Everything Jesus did and said and embodied, had this end in view. "Anyone who has seen me, has seen the Father" (John 14:9). So everything Father God has ever done and said, has had this end in view.
There is no question, but that St John looks the deepest into this, of all the New Testament writers. Church tradition has it that he wrote his gospel at the end of his life. St John was able to recall and understand the most deeply, because he had had his whole, long life to experience his union with God. Many of the conversations with Jesus which St John records are so personal, so 'interior', that their subject matter cannot be the stuff of public preaching. This is why it didn't find its way into the other three gospels, whose content was shaped around the needs of the first evangelising communities.
Jesus lived His life in perfect union with His Father. "I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him" (John 8:28-29). When He says that, my jaw drops - but I believe Him. Many don't. Faith has to be planted in us by God to last forever. Some come along for a while 'because that makes sense to me now' - and then later, something else makes more sense.
How does Jesus reunite us with Father God? By transferring to us His Own perfect relationship with His Father. St John even captures the moment when this first began to happen. The one God chose first to confer this on was the extraordinary St Mary Magdalene. Jesus said to her: "I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (John 20:17).
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