Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Priestly Prayer of Jesus (III)
“I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me … as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me … I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me … Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me. I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.” Jn 17,20-26
“Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mk 15,39), shouts out the Roman centurion under the cross, seeing Jesus of Nazareth to die in that way: suffering cruelly, but forgiving every one. It is an intuition, an awareness which suddenly assails him while on service to ensure that that execution occurs regularly. We also should utter every morning the same exclamation, when, opening the gospel, we are reached by the power of his miracles, by the truth of his parables, by his compassion for the sicks and the poors, by his holiness which makes the demons to flee, by his communion with the Father and by his need to pray, by his frankness in speaking, by his freedom to respond to the people’s opinions and to the narrowness of the law, by his ability to read in the thought and in the heart of the men, by his walk on the waters and by his love for the sinners. The gospels are a continuous, insistent demonstration that Jesus of Nazareth really is the Messiah, the Son of God. In the today gospel we are reached by the last verses of his priestly prayer, in front of which, like the centurion, we cannot do anything other than to exclaim: “Truly this man was the Son of God”. It is a prayer which surrounds all of us and in which everyone, including us, is present. Let’s read it again slowly, letting to each word the time to penetrate in our hearts, like the water, after the rain, enters the thirsty land: “I pray not only for them, but also for those who believe in me … as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me….. I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them”. Let’s pray, therefore, that the Lord will also give to the church of today this unity and this spirit of testimony.