Saturday in the Sixth Week of Easter, May 20, 2023

John 16, 23-28

Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.  I have told you this in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but I will tell you clearly about the Father. On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.”. This promise by the Lord Jesus was included at the end of yesterday’s Gospel Reading although it begins a new subject and is connected to the words that follow it: “Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.”  The Lord says that we should ask God for whatever we need for the accomplishment of his holy will, and that we should do so in the name of Jesus.  We accomplish this in the Mass prayers, as when in today’s Mass the priest prays for us that God grant that we may strive always to hold tightly to the Paschal mystery — that is, to the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ.  The priest asks this of God the Father “through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever.”  When we ask for something in someone’s name, it is as though that person himself were asking for it and would receive it.  Thus, when we ask for the grace to do God’s will and we do so in the name of Jesus, it is as though Jesus himself were asking this for himself of the Father — and of course the Father will grant such a request of the Son.  The Lord’s counsel to ask for what we need in his name draws us closer to his own divine Sonship in which we share as adopted children of God, as well as assures us of receiving a favorable answer.  “Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.”  Our joy is perfected or “completed” in performing the Father’s will, by which we are sanctified.

“I have told you this in figures of speech.”  The mistranslation here leads to a misunderstanding.  The text should read: “I have told you these things in figures of speech.”  That is, the Lord’s words about prayer are a parenthetical statement within the larger discourse.  We need to go back a bit in the discourse to recall what “these things” are: principally, that the Lord Jesus is departing for the Father but that the Apostles will see him again, and that he must depart in order to send the Advocate — the Holy Spirit — upon them, who will teach them all that they must know.  “The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but I will tell you clearly about the Father.”  This “hour” will arrive after Jesus rises from the dead and reveals to the Apostles all that the Scriptures had said about him.  He has spoken to them to this point in figures and parables to prepare them for that hour, when they would possess the faith and grace necessary to know the truth in all its fullness.

“On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God.”  They will begin to pray to the Father in the name of the Son during the time between the Resurrection and the Ascension.  And Jesus assures them that the Father loves them so much that even if they did not ask in the name of Jesus or if Jesus did not intercede for them, he would grant it.  “I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”  The Lord tells the Apostles in what seems plain language to us that he is returning to heaven, but the Apostles would not have grasped from these words that the Lord was going to die on the Cross for the sins of the world.  Only later, with the Lord’s help, would they put his prophesies about his Death together with his speaking to them about returning to the Father.

The name of the Lord Jesus is powerful.  Let us speak his name with great love, as he speaks our names among the angels and with his Father, and let us pray for all that we need in it.