Overview:

Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

A Reflection for Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

Jesus said to his disciples:
“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” (Jn 16:12)

Find today’s readings here.

There’s something comforting—and also a bit unsettling, truth be told—in Jesus’ words from today’s Gospel: “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.”

These words have really started to resonate with me as a mother. Since having my first son in 2022 and my second in 2024, I have often found myself praying for peace because of anxieties about their futures. I can so easily spiral into the unknown: the “what ifs,” the worries, the situations I make up in my mind that don’t exist yet and won’t for many years. 

These worries come from wanting to know they will be okay. That they will be healthy, have friends, and grow into good men surrounded by love and peace. I want to get ahead of anything that could hurt them or shape them in ways I can’t control. But I can’t, and as frustrating as that is to a semi-control freak, I may be starting to realize that I am not supposed to. 

One of my favorite comedians, Tig Notaro, shared something her stepfather once told her: “It is not the child’s responsibility to teach the parent who they are. It is the parent’s responsibility to learn who their child is.” I heard her say this on her podcast during one of my many, many postpartum walks with my new baby. In the midst of all my worry, these words became a balm. This perspective shifted me away from trying to predict or control and toward paying attention. Toward being present. Toward letting my boys become who they are, instead of trying to map it all out ahead of time. 

And in a different way, this idea brings me back to Jesus’ words: “you cannot bear it now.” Because Jesus doesn’t just stop there. (If He did, it would feel a bit like getting a text from a friend or a boss that says “Can we talk later?” with no context. And what’s more anxiety provoking than that?) He promises that the Spirit will come, the Spirit who will guide us into truth. Not all at once, not immediately, but over time. 

There is so much I don’t know, and so much that I am not ready to know, about who my children will become, what their lives will hold, what challenges and joys they will encounter. And while that uncertainty can feel overwhelming, I’m choosing to see it as a kind of grace. Because if I knew everything now, the good and bad, I truly could not bear it. 

So instead, I am working on trust. On believing and knowing that I am not left alone in the not-knowing, but that the Holy Spirit is present in it with me, guiding me and revealing what I need, when I need it. Learning, slowly, that it is enough to be present, to learn who my children are right now. To trust that I will be led, even without having the whole picture. 

Faith, like parenting, I am coming to learn, isn’t about getting ahead of the story. It’s about trusting that we are being guided within it.

Kat O’Loughlin is grant manager at America Media.