Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter, May 27, 2020

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.”

From all eternity, God begot God, and Light begot Light.  The One who begot named the Divine Person who came from him, “The Son”.  This Father and his Son are co-equal in power and in eternity.  When the Son became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary and was born of her, his name on earth was called “Jesus”, which means, “God saves”.  Here, the Son prays to his Father: “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one.”  That is, keep these followers of mine in the name “Son” which you gave to me.  The Lord Jesus is praying for us to be known by the Father as his sons: in fact, sons in the Son.  Adopted sons, to be sure, but every bit as much heirs of heaven as the one natural Son.  The state of God’s children by adoption cannot be overstated.  In the natural order, God creates human beings, body and soul.  Human beings are thus creatures of God, but not his natural children.  We are not divine, after all.  But we become his adopted children in the waters of baptism, through which we share in — though we do not possess — the divinity of Christ.  We are thus members of his Body, and so united to each other in this way that the Lord can pray, “Keep them . . . so that they may be one just as we are one.”  The unity of the adopted children of God, the Church, is to be a visible sign of the invisible unity of the Father and the Son in heaven.  The Apostle John was so greatly moved by the Lord’s prayer here that he pleaded with his followers till his dying day for them to love each other (cf. 1 John 4, 7).

Speaking of us as the adopted children of God, the Lord Jesus says, “They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.”  To understand our relation to the world, we must look at the natural Son of God’s relation the world.  St. Paul, speaking on how a Christian should act, says that he should live in the world as though he did not (cf. 1 Corinthians 7, 31).  How much more so this applied to Christ!  The Christian scorns what this world prizes, and prizes what this world scorns.  He sees self-indulgence as the trap that it is, and relishes the chance to serve others solely for the sake of Christ.  Where the secular person sees power, the Christian sees the opportunity to enrich others and glorify God.

Even so, we are mortal and our place, for now, is here.  Therefore, the Lord prays, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One.”  With the Death of Christ, the devil’s power over humans is broken.  He now has power over only those who give themselves to him.  Before the coming of Christ, the devil was much to be feared.  Now, though we must combat his temptations to commit sin, we possess the grace and the strength to refuse to do so.  Through baptism, we are covered with Christ as though with impenetrable armor, and we are overcome by the devil’s shafts only when we strip him off us, resolving to sin.

The Christian, thus armored, must not content himself with sitting back and playing defense against the world.  He has a mission, given him by God.  The Lord Jesus prays: “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.”  Jesus is “sent”, and we are “sent”.  St. Matthew preserves for us  the Great Commission of Jesus as he was about to ascend into heaven: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matthew 28, 19-20).  Certain Apostles like St. James the son of Alphaeus and St. Matthias stayed in and near Jerusalem during their apostolic endeavors, and others, such as St. Andrew and St. Peter, went off to Greece and Rome, but all went “into the world”: wherever there were people who did not know God, to show him to them.  This commission is meant for us as well; it is meant for all who are the adopted children of God, who wish above all things to tell others about their Father.