Homily for the
7th Sunday of Easter
May 21, 2023
John 17: 1-11
Christian Brothers,
Iona University, N.R.
St. Francis Xavier,
Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption,
Bronx
“Father, the hour has come” (John 17: 1).
When Jesus’ mother pointed out to him that the wine had run out at the wedding banquet in Cana, he responded that his hour hadn’t come yet (John 2:3-4). But the sign that he worked anyway began to reveal his glory, according to St. John, and “his disciples began to believe in him” (2:11). The sign at Cana initiated Jesus’ hour.
Jesus, of course, doesn’t use hour to
mark time. The hour is an event,
and more than an event, a sign, a promise of great things to come. When Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as
president of the Confederate States in 1861, one rabid secessionist politician
declared, “The man and the hour have met.”
As we view it now, that was an infamous hour, an hour that promised to
maintain an infamous, immoral practice.
Jesus refers to another infamous hour at the
time of his arrest. He tells “the chief
priests and temple guards and elders who had come for him” in the Garden of
Gethsemane, “This is your hour, the time for the power of darkness” (Luke
22:52-53). The Prince of Darkness, whose
ambition is to thwart God and God’s plan for humanity, had his hour and his
momentary triumph.
Jesus’ hour is the hour of God’s working in
the world to accomplish his plan to undo the power of darkness and to bring us
all into divine light. So Jesus prays amid
his apostles near the end of the Last Supper, “Father, the hour has come.” It’s the brief hour of Satan’s triumph, the
everlasting hour of God’s victory, thru which the Son will “give eternal life
to all [the Father] gave him” (17:2).
Jesus’ hour is the hour of the paschal mystery: his passion, death, resurrection, and
ascension. Thru his hour he receives
glory from his Father and he glorifies the Father “by accomplishing on earth
the work that [God] gave him to do” (17:4).
Therefore God will glorify him, the man Jesus of Nazareth, “with the
glory that [he, the eternal Son] had with [the Father] before the world began”
(17:5).
Two weeks ago we saw a magnificent spectacle
of glory. More than anyone else, the
Brits know how to do glory, whether it’s a royal wedding, a royal funeral, or
as we witnessed on May 6, a royal coronation.
From the late 15th century until 1963, our
Church also had a splendid coronation ritual.
(Paul VI was the last Pope to be crowned rather than inaugurated.) Part of the ritual involved the papal master
of ceremonies preceding the new Pope on his way from St. Peter’s sacristy into
the church, carrying a smoldering wick of flax.
3 times the procession would halt, and the MC would announce, “Holy
Father, sic transit gloria mundi” – “thus passes away worldly glory.”
Papal splendor passes away; Pope Francis has
done a lot to remove any earthly appearance of it. Royal splendor in Britain and anywhere else
will pass away. Only the glory of Jesus
Christ our Redeemer, risen and ascended to heaven, will remain. It’s not a worldly glory but glory emanating
from God, glory originating in eternity.
That glory isn’t the glory of Jesus alone. He’s promised us a share of his divine glory. He prays to his Father, “Everything of mine
is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them”
(17:10), in those whom the Father has given to Jesus to lead from this world’s
transient pleasures and sufferings to eternal glory, eternal light, eternal
life. St. Peter reminds us that when
Christ’s glory is fully revealed on the Last Day, we’ll rejoice exultantly (1
Pet 4:13); his glory will be ours too because we belong to him.
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