Homily for Thursday
7th Week of Easter
May 20, 2021
John 17: 20-26
Provincial House, New
Rochelle, N.Y.
“I pray … that they
may all be one…” (John 17: 21).
At the Last Supper,
we have Jesus’ last will and testament, as it were. In the Synoptics, that’s his gift of himself,
the Eucharist. In John, it’s a long
discourse, which includes a long prayer.
Jesus speaks of love: his love
for his Father and the Father’s love for him; his love for his disciples there
at the table and in future generations; and his disciples’ love for one
another.
In our Johannine passage today, the conclusion of his priestly prayer, he offers unity. As Jesus and his Father are one, he wishes to take his disciples—his friends—into that unity.
In our patristic
reading on Sunday, St. Gregory of Nyssa identified the Holy Spirit as
“glory.” He cites Jesus’ words today in
this prayer to his Father: “I have given
them [his disciples] the glory you gave me” (17:22).[1]
The Spirit is the
principle of unity, the bond between Father and Son. Giving this gift to us enables us disciples
to “be one” as Father and Son are one (17:21).
We become one with them, bonded by the glorious gift from Jesus. In our familiar prayer ending, we the Church
are “the unity of the Holy Spirit” which makes its prayer to the Father thru
Jesus Christ, in which Jesus Christ lives and reigns forever.
Jesus gives us his
Spirit out of love to enable us to love—to love him, to love his Father, to
love one another: “that the love with
which you loved me may be in them and I in them” (17:26), and that we may so
testify to the world in the power of the Spirit he gives us.
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