GOSPEL, John (17: 11-19)
Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint John
Jesus Prays for His Disciples
11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 15 I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. 16 They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
The Gospel of the Lord
REFLECTION
In today’s Gospel, St. John discloses how Jesus reveals to the Apostles, the intimacy of his relationship with the Father, in which a very significant gesture and expression can be seen, as He speaks of the ‘hour’, “Father, the time has come”; “Father, it’s time. Glorify your son, that your son may glorify you” (John 17: 1).
The gesture described is of raising your eyes to heaven indicates the need to seek things from above, “Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said”. This is further exemplified according to St. Paul by his well-known phrase of: “Seek things from there high, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3, 1). The “high”, on which we must seek him, refers above all to that of our souls, in prayer and contemplation of divine mysteries.
The time has come for men to come to know God through Jesus “because I gave them the words you gave me”, John (17: 8) and so they become witnesses of life, of divine life.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ leads us to strive for true happiness and to exercise compassion with the weak … It definitely marks us and opens us to Life.
Through the Spirit, God works within each human being and dwells in the depths of that person but encourages everyone to live by the values of the Gospel. The ‘Good News’ is an expression of the liberating happiness that He wants to give us, the choice of a dignified and full life, both on earth and in the Spirit.
PRAYER
Grant, oh most omnipotent and merciful God, that the Holy Spirit will come to dwell in us and transform us into temples of His glory. Amen