John 16:20–23
20 Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. 21 When a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world. 22 So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. 23 In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name.
Catholic Exegesis:
The Second Vatican Council teaches that if we are to derive the true meaning from the sacred texts, attention must be devoted “not only to their content but to the unity of the whole of Scripture, the living tradition of the entire Church, and the analogy of faith. […] Everything to do with the interpretation of Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgment of the Church, which exercises the divinely conferred communion and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God” (Dei Verbum, 12).
St. John Paul II, when he promulgated the Catechism of the Catholic Church, explained that the Catechism "is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium." He went on to "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion" (Fidei Depositum).
Cited in the Catechism:
Commentary:
Fullness of joy (16:16–33)
16:16–22. Earlier our Lord consoled the disciples by assuring them that he would send them the Holy Spirit after he went away (v. 7). Now he gives them further consolation: he is not leaving them permanently, he will come back to stay with them. However, the apostles fail to grasp what he means, and they ask each other what they make of it. Our Lord does not give them a direct explanation, perhaps because they would not understand what he meant (as happened before: cf. Mt 16:21–23 and par.). But he does emphasize that though they are sad now they will soon be rejoicing: after suffering tribulation they will be filled with a joy they will never lose (cf. Jn 17:13). This is a reference primarily to the Resurrection (cf. Lk 24:41), but also to their definitive encounter with Christ in heaven. This image of the woman giving birth (frequently used in the Old Testament to express intense pain) is also often used, particularly by the prophets, to mean the birth of the new messianic people (cf. Is 21:3; 26:17; 66:7; Jer 30:6; Hos 13:13; Mic 4:9–10). The words of Jesus reported here seem to be the fulfilment of those prophecies. The birth of the messianic people—the Church of Christ—involves intense pain, not only for Jesus but also, to some degree, for the apostles. But this pain, like birth pains, will be made up for by the joy of the final coming of the Kingdom of Christ: “I consider,” says St Paul, “that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18).
Source: The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries. Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and by Scepter Publishers in the United States. We encourage readers to purchase The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.
"Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." St Jerome
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