Dwelling in the Household of God: Johannine Ecclesiology and Spirituality

In her award-winning first book, God Dwells With Us: Temple Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel, Mary L. Coloe, P.B.V.M., explored the profound insight of John's Gospel expressed in Jesus' invitation to his disciples: "Make your home in me, as I make mine in you" (John 15:4). For the gospel's author and audience, the dwelling of God among humans was, above all, the Jerusalem Temple. The gospel traces how--after the trauma of the destruction of the Temple--the Johannine community came to expand and deepen its knowledge of God's dwelling among humans, finding it now in the person of Jesus and in the community of believers. Dwelling in the Household of God moves us to the other pole of the invitation: "make your home in me." The starting point now is an image in John 14:2: "my Father's house," which is given its Old Testament meaning of "my father's household." Our awareness thus moves, like that of the first Christians, from understanding "My father's house" as the Temple (John 2:16) to "My Father's Household" as a community of believers drawn into Jesus' own divine filiation. Coloe invites us to re-read the gospel from the post-Easter perspective of those who have become brothers and sisters of Jesus and living Temples of God's presence. What emerges is nothing less than a profound mysticism of the mutual indwelling of God and believers.