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+In the Name...~
“I have manifested thy name
to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world; thine they were, and
thou gavest them to me, and they have kept thy word” (St. John 17:6).
In liturgical time which intersects
and is to shape our chronological time as present day Christians, we
find ourselves today in an in-between time. This past Thursday the Church
celebrated the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ to Heaven forty days
after His Resurrection. A week from today, the Church will celebrate
the Feast of Pentecost, known as Whitsunday, when on the fiftieth day
after our Lord’s Resurrection the Holy Spirit came down from Heaven
upon the Apostles in Jerusalem.
The Gospel this morning takes
us back before the Resurrection of Jesus, and even before His death
on Good Friday to the Upper Room on Maundy Thursday. We’re taken there
so that we might hear the high priestly prayer of Jesus to His Father,
so that we understand His will for us in and as the Church after His
Death, Resurrection, Ascension, and the Coming of the Holy Ghost. We
need to hear what He prayed so that we understand who we are and what
we are to be and do.
The Gospel this morning begins
with, “When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to
heaven and said…” What were the words He had spoken before He began
His Prayer (which comprises the entire seventeenth chapter of St. John’s
Gospel)?
The words were these: “The
hour is now coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered,
every man to his home, and will leave me alone; yet I am not alone,
for the Father is with me. I have said this to you, that in me you may
have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer,
I have overcome the world” (16:32-33). After these words, He
began His prayer.
The prayer has three parts,
and we have heard the first part (Jesus’ prayer to be glorified) and
a part of the second part (His prayer for the Apostles). There is much
more in the prayer for the Apostles. He concludes with the third part
(His prayer for the Church).
Notice that Jesus boldly prays
to the Father that the Father would glorify Him because He had glorified
the Father on earth. He says, “I glorified thee on earth, having accomplished
the work which thou gavest me to do; and now, Father, glorify thou me
in thy presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world
was made.” Jesus here speaks of his existence as the Son of God, the
second Person of the Trinity, before He became incarnate of the Virgin
Mary and was made Man. He looks back to that time. He reflects upon
the time He has served the Father on earth as Jesus Christ, and He looks
forward to the time of His continued presence on earth for the Church
through the Apostles by the power of the Holy Spirit.
He prays for the Apostles whom
He states are “the men whom thou gavest me out of the world.” Here
we see that Jesus long after His all-night vigil of prayer before He
called the Apostles to their ministry, acknowledges that the men He
called had already been chosen by the Father. Jesus’ constant desire
and intent was to follow the will of His Father in everything He did
and taught. He says this repeatedly throughout the Gospel of St. John.
And this He did. He says in His prayer, “I have glorified thee on
earth, having accomplished the work thou gavest me to do…”
Note that “the men whom thou
gavest me” were given “out of the world,” meaning that they had
been chosen by the Father and called by the Incarnate Son out of the
world to challenge the world to be in accordance with God’s will and
purposes. The word Church in Greek is ecclesia which means those
who are “called out” – meaning that the Church in her life and
teachings is to have as her identity that of being contra mundum
(against the world) so that world can be redeemed. We must never forget
that the Church as it functions in the world as the Body of Christ must
always resist being of the world, resisting the Zeitgeist (the spirit
of the age) because its vocation is to teach and uphold Truth, submissive
to the Holy Spirit as discerned by the Church Catholic in its development,
and thus lead people to their true home – Heaven.
Even though Jesus had said
before beginning His prayer that the Apostles would leave Him alone
and would be scattered, He says in His prayer that “they have kept
thy word,” that “they have received” His words, and that they
“know in truth that I came from thee; and they have believed that
thou didst send me.”
Jesus finds fulfillment in
this, and He prays that the Father will be fulfilled.
He states, “I am praying
for them; I am not praying for the world but for those whom thou hast
given me, for they are thine; all mine are thine, and thine are mine,
and I am glorified in them.”
He prays for the Apostles,
but NOT for the world. Why? Because it is through them that the world
can be affected. They need His prayers, and that is His focus. They
are to take on the world as He did; and they (as He experienced) will
face rejection, persecution, suffering, and martyrdom, save one –
St. John the Evangelist. Jesus knew that they would re-gather, and that
the Holy Spirit would give them the power to go out in His Name to all
the world.
But even though the Apostles
were chosen and called to be “out of the world” as we too are chosen
and called to be, Jesus says after stating that “I am no more in the
world, but they are in the world.” Again, as I have already said,
the Church is to be in the world, but not of the world; and the Church
stumbles and fails when it does not live by this reality, and it has
nothing to say to the world.
Lastly, in this portion of
Jesus’ Maundy Thursday prayer we have heard today, He prays that “they
may be one, even as we are one.” There can be no fruit borne by the
Apostles in their Christ commissioned ministry if they fail to be united.
No solo pilots, but rather a college of Apostles with different gifts
and regions where they would be led, always united as servants of the
Servant.
You can see how this prayer
of our Lord is to be fulfilled in the life of the Church in all times
and in all places. Those men who have been called and ordained as successors
to the Apostles have no ministry of their own, but only the ministry
of Jesus; just as Jesus has no ministry of his own, but only that of
His Father. And you’ve heard me say before that we have no Faith of
our own. We have the faith that has been entrusted to us – the Sacred
Tradition of the Church that trumps any spirit of any age.
Apostles and the churches they
lead and serve are to stand against the world so that the world will
stand under the authority of Christ until the time when all things are
subjected to Him, for as St. Paul writes in his first letter to the
Corinthians, “For God has put all things in subjection under his feet.”
Our common vocation here in
this portion of the Church of Christ is to be all we can be, being
in a forward trajectory of individually and corporately with the hope
of echoing the words of Jesus to the Father, “I glorified thee on
earth, having accomplished the work which thou gavest me to do…”
Shouldn’t that be what constitutes
the basic ingredient for our legacy as Christians, that we prayerfully
strive to be able to say with humility, but with a degree of spiritual
confidence based upon a fervent desire to lose one’s life to find
one’s life, to die to self to live for Christ, that at the end of
the day if today be our last or if our last day be blessedly delayed
for many more days, months, and years , the heartfelt statement to Jesus,
“I have glorified thee on earth, having accomplished the work thou
gavest me to do.”
Are you glorifying Jesus on
earth with your time, talent, and treasure? Is there anything that you
are clinging to which diminishes what He receives from you in heart,
mind, and spirit? Are you doing with thanksgiving and honor the work
and the works He has given you to do? If not, tell Him that you are
sorry, and ask Him for the grace to increasingly be His servant now
and forever.
+In the Name…
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