Thursday, May 16, 2002
7th Week of Easter
1st Reading: Acts 22:30; 23:6-11
Gospel: Jn 17:20-26
Jesus
looked up to heaven and prayed, "I pray not only for these but also
for those who through their word will believe in me. May they all be one
as you Father are in me and I am in you. May they be one in us; so the
world may believe that you have sent me.
I have given them the Glory you have given me, that they may be one as
we are one: I in them and you in me. Thus they shall reach perfection
in unity and the world shall know that you have sent me and that I have
loved them just as you loved me.
Father, since you have given them to me, I want them to be with me where
I am and see the Glory you gave me, for you loved me before the foundation
of the world.
Righteous Father, the world has not known you but I have known you, and
these have known that you have sent me. As I revealed your Name to them,
so will I continue to reveal it, so that the love with which you loved
me may be in them and I also may be in them."
Commentary
Jesus prays for the one thing we most need and find hardest to achieve: unity. What prevents us from being united is first, greed, and second, our natural instinct of self preservation. Jesus was without greed and prepared to be vulnerable. Evidently that's what God is like. Those who are in God have what it takes to be united and it does not come without a great personal cost known as Love. "Love," that word we throw around so carelessly, is what makes God tick. It says: "I want you to have life in all its fullness. There is nothing I will not give, willingly, for this." God shares with us this way of being, which involves a commitment to spend our lives promoting fuller life for those who lack basic needs or fullness.