Wednesday in the Seventh Week of Easter, May 19, 2021

John 17:11b-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.”

At the end of the Lord’s sermon at the Last Supper, he offers a prayer to his Father which is sometimes called the Prayer of Unity.  In it, the Lord prays for his disciples.  We seldom hear the words of the Lord’s prayers to his Father when he interceded for his disciples, and so here we learn of his greatest concerns for them.  He does not pray for their health or material prosperity or even for their success in preaching the Gospel after he has left them.  He prays for their unity.  We must distinguish this unity from other things that might resemble it.  “Unity” involves the spirit and is accomplished by the willed reception of grace.  Unity allows for the communication of merit from the Lord and the saints to us, and of our merit to others, for the strengthening of faith and virtue.  “Unity” transcends “community” and “associations”.  As St. Paul says, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body” (1 Corinthians 12, 12-13).  As a result, “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together” (1 Corinthians 12, 26).  It is in that we are members of the Body of Christ that we are saved.  The Lord confers unity with him and with his members on those who desire it through baptism, and strengthens the bond of this unity through offering us — and our devout receiving — the Sacraments of his Church.  We also do our part in strengthening our bond with him and with our fellow members by growing in our faith, hope and love and by performing good works.  Our Lord prays for his followers at the Last Supper for the graces we need in order to do this.

“When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me.”  The name the Father gave him, from all eternity, is “Son”.  The Son protected his Apostles from evil by virtue of his Sonship, and of their becoming “sons in the Son” through their faith — all excepting “the son of destruction” who chose to destroy himself by hating the Son of God.  “In order that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”  The sense is, “Fulfilling the Scripture.”  The Scriptures did not cause Judas to sin, nor did anything else.  His choice to betray Christ was foreseen by the Prophets through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

“I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One.”  The Apostles — and we — are to work during our lifetimes to spread the Gospel.  The Lord Jesus does not ask the Father to take those who belong to him “out of the world”, that is, to preserve them the attendant hardships and persecution.  These will act as the means to grow stronger in the Faith, for those committed to the Lord.  At the same time, he asks that his members be kept from the devil — from temptations that cannot be overcome, from despair, and from the direct assaults of Satan and his horde.  Rather, those who are members of the Lord’s Body will defeat the Evil One by resisting temptation in their own lives, and aiding others in resisting it. 

“They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth.”  Through baptism, “consecration in the truth”, we do not belong to the world any longer.  We die to the world and all its false delights and wickedness in the waters of baptism and live in Christ.  We are also consecrated “in truth” through Holy Orders and Matrimony, sacraments which provide us the graces we need in order to live our specific vocations.

“And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”  The Lord Jesus consecrated himself for them through his Blood on the Cross, offering his total obedience to the Father for the salvation of the human race.  In this way, he offers his followers a model and also the means — the grace — to follow in his footsteps: “For unto this are you called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps” (1 Peter 2, 21). 

To “consecrate” means “to make sacred” and “to set apart”.  Let us keep in mind that we have been consecrated by the Lord for glory.