Wednesday in the Seventh Week of Easter, May 24, 2023

John 17, 11-19

Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed, saying: “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one. When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you. I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely. I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”

The idea of separation and unity first came into the world by God’s calling the Hebrews to be his holy people in the days of the Exodus, giving them the Law and making with them a covenant which made them distinct from their neighbors and unified in their worship of and belonging to God.  This distinction was marked not only by their behavior but even physically, through circumcision of the males.  This unity and separation was foreshadowed by the creation of the man and woman as members of one another and the separate creation of the human race from that of the animals and plants.  It is also foreshadowed in the choice of God to save Noah and his family in the Ark while the wicked perished in the flood.

The unity among themselves and separation from all other peoples of the Jews itself signifies that of the Apostles, and then of the Holy Church.  The Lord Jesus prays for the Father to bestow and protect this unity: “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one.”  To be one as the Divine Persons of the Trinity are one goes far beyond the unity that existed among the Jews: it is a binding on the level of existence that can be achieved solely through supernatural means.  There is also separation from all other peoples in that, “They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.”  This separation from the world is accomplished through the defection of those who at one time belonged to this unity and through the rejection of those who do not desire it: “the world hated them.”

This separation does not, at this time, mean removal from the world.  Just as the Israelites dwelt among the pagan nations of their day, so those who belong to each other in Christ dwell among the unbelievers in the world, not conquering them by force as the Israelites did to the Canaanites but with love so that they might come to know the very Source of love, Almighty God, and have a place in our unity: “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.”

“And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”  The Greek word translated here as “consecrate” might be better translated as “sanctify”.  But since Jesus is God, it seems that he could not make himself more holy, more sanctified.  The Lord’s meaning is that he gives his holiness a new purpose, our holiness, our sanctification.  He has begun this work through his taking on our flesh, our human nature, and he will fully enact this work in us through his coming Passion, Death, and Resurrection, by which grace comes into the world, won for us by the sufferings of our Savior.