Wednesday of Week 7 of Easter – Gospel
11And 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. 12While 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. 13But 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. 14I 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. 15I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one., 16They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 17Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
Commentary on John 17:11-19
Today Jesus continues his prayer for his disciples. He prays for their continued loyalty to the gospel message and for unity among them. He has kept them true to his name. One was lost, although that was foreseen from all time.
They have accepted the message of Jesus and, because of that, they will be hated by the world as Jesus himself was hated. Because, like Jesus, they do not identify with the values and priorities of the world.
At the same time, Jesus makes it very clear that he is not asking that they be removed from the world’s environment, only that they be protected from its evil influences. It is only by being in the world that they will be able to communicate the gospel message. Armed with truth and the integrity of Jesus himself, he is sending them into the midst of the world. That is where they are to do their work. They were, as he said elsewhere, to be “the salt of the earth” and the “yeast in the dough”.
Jesus prays that they be consecrated in truth, the truth of God himself. This truth does not consist of a set of dogmas. Rather it consists in the living out lives of perfect integrity and wholeness, in perfect harmony with the will of the Father and the Way of Jesus, and dedicated to bringing that truthfulness and integrity to the world. The disciples do this by living lives of love, a love expressed in service to the well-being of all. They have the full backing of Jesus, who says:
…I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
Let us then pray today:
- for the unity among us which Jesus prayed for in his disciples;
- that we may be ready for the hostility and the indifference of the world;
- that we may realise, if we want to give witness to the gospel, we must be fully inserted into the world by which we are surrounded. To be ‘holy’ is not to escape and distance ourselves physically from that world, which is what many are tempted to do or even think is the right thing to do*;
- that we may be people of complete integrity, filled with truth and sincerity, so that what people see in us is what we truly are and wish to be: disciples of Jesus.
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*Notwithstanding this, there are cloistered and contemplative communities who, while physically separated from the ‘world’, devote their time and energy to pray for that world.
