Wednesday in the Seventh Week of Easter, May 15, 2024

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.”

Today’s Gospel Reading is taken from the Lord’s prayer at the Last Supper following his long discourse to his Apostles.

“Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one.”  The sentence is short but the meaning is long.  Jesus speaks of his name as the Father’s possession which he gave to him.   This name is “the Son”.  From all eternity the Father begot the Son so that, as the Son himself says, “All things are delivered to me by my Father” (Luke 10, 22).  That is, all that the Son is, he received from the Father, most especially his Sonship.  Through the Son’s words, “in your name that you have given me” we see how the Son treasures his being the Son of the Father.  It is, literally, everything to him.  The Son now prays to the Father that he, the Father, keep the Apostles in this name, that is, to give the Apostles — and, by extension, all the baptized — a share in the Sonship of Jesus Christ.  This sharing is through adoption, for we began life as his creatures.  He asks the Father to do this “so that they may be one just as we are one.”  The unity he prays for goes far beyond our common ideas of what unity is.  This unity far exceeds any mutual agreement on purposes or actions or identity.  This unity, conferred by Almighty God, makes us members of one another in so profound a way that the unity of the members of a human body can only be a crude model of it.  

“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.”  This great gift of unity is given us, but it can be refused, as Judas refused it.  But to refuse it means to be lost forever.  “In order that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”  Not that Judas was fated by the Scriptures to betray Jesus, but that they were fulfilled when he chose to do so.

“The world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.”  If we belong to Christ, we cannot belong to “the world”: we cannot live for ourselves and for self-indulgence.  In doing so we make other things our gods.  But our thoughts are of heaven and our sole purpose is serving God on earth so as to be happy with him in heaven.  The world “hates” us in that by rejecting self indulgence those who promote it insult us, work against us, and even persecute us.  They see the very existence of a Christian as a threat to their power.  But we are protected by the power of Jesus Christ.

“I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One.”  That is, for all that we have become the adopted children of God we remain human and continue to live out our mortal lives on the earth.  As such, we stand in danger of the temptations of the devil, but the power of God limits what he can do to us to us, so that we only fall to him if we choose to fall, as Judas did.

“They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.”  1 Peter 2, 11: “I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, to refrain yourselves from carnal desires which war against the soul.”  Hebrews 13, 14: “We have not here a lasting city: but we seek one that is to come.”

“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 word of God is the truth in which we are consecrated.  This word is his will, which we commit to carry out when we are baptized, and which we are able to carry out because of the graces we receive in that sacrament.  His will is for us to “bear fruit”, bringing all those in the world to him through our prayers, our good example, and our words.

The thirty-fifth article in our continuing series on the Holy Mass: The Sanctuary

St. John describes the heavenly sanctuary in chapters four and five of the Book of Revelation: the throne, upon which God the Father sat, signifying the Holy Spirit), and an altar.  This arrangement was given to Moses as the plan for the sanctuary of the tent (later, the Temple) in which God would be worshipped.  The ark of the covenant was set in it and an altar, with a seven candle menorah.  The sons of Levi who were not direct descendants of Aaron acted as attendants in the sanctuary but were not permitted in the holiest place where the ark was kept: only the direct descendent of Aaron, the high priest, was allowed there.  And this became the model for the sanctuary in Catholic churches.  The ark of the covenant, in which was kept a jar of manna, as well as Aaron’s staff and the stone tablets of the Law is replaced by the tabernacle which contains the Body of Christ.  As in the Temple, where a lamp burned continually before the ark, so a lamp burns continually before the tabernacle in a Catholic church.  Then there is the altar and candles surrounding the altar.

Everything in the sanctuary of a Catholic church has meaning.  The sanctuary is raised above the floor of the nave (the place of the congregation) on a platform reach by three steps.  This is the hill of Golgotha, on which Jesus died.  The altar is the Cross on which the Lord gave up his life for us.  The tabernacle is the tomb in which his Body was laid.  Thus, when the priest, the alter Christus enters the sanctuary and kisses the altar, we see the deeper reality of Christ climbing Golgotha and kissing his Cross before he is crucified on it.  Later, at the altar, his Cross he offers himself up to his Father through the hands of the man who shares in his Priesthood.  And afterwards, we all come forward to receive a share in his Body from himself.

There is also a pulpit from which the word of God is proclaimed.  Traditionally, the readings were read from the altar and the priest would preach from a pulpit outside the sanctuary.  Over time, the pulpit was included within the sanctuary but at its edge, away from the altar.  Until recent times, only the clergy and the servers were allowed within the sanctuary, but now lay people are allowed to read the Old and New Testament and so enter the sanctuary.

I ask for your prayers as today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of my ordination to the Priesthood.