Easter 7 B (2024)
In today’s second reading, John speaks beautifully, radiantly,
about God, Father, Son and Spirit,
about God’s love for us,
about how our love of others is the very presence of God.
God’s love for us is shown in Jesus:
Jesus is the model for our love for others.
Gazing on Jesus draws us into his love for us,
so that the Spirit of God, opens us up to loving others as Jesus does.
A wonderful passage: well worth reading meditatively.
On this, the Sunday before Pentecost,
we hear Chapter 17 of John’s gospel,
which is the last before Jesus and the disciples go to the garden
where Jesus is arrested.
We hear it spread over the three years of the lectionary:
this year we have the middle portion.
The whole chapter is a prayer.
We are, in a sense, overhearing Jesus praying to his Father,
and his prayer is for his followers;
his followers then, and his followers now.
Hearing another person pray for you can be touching, intimate –
a moment of grace, of joy, of faith. (We should do more of it.)
Today we hear Jesus praying for us.
We are held in prayer, eternally, between Jesus and the Father.
Jesus prays
for their sake I consecrate myself
‘Consecrate’ means: to make holy,
to set aside for sacred use, to dedicate to God.
When Jesus prays
for their sake I consecrate myself
He is not speaking ‘in the moment’
but speaking of his whole human life:
as a life wholly dedicated to his Father’s will,
lived to reveal God’s love, lived for our sake.
This ‘revealing of God’s love’ is the truth.
Jesus prays for his consecration to God to transform us.
He prays:
Consecrate them in the truth;
He prays that, through God’s power,
we, his followers,
are immersed in the truth about God,
revealed in Jesus who said ‘I am the Truth’,
and it is exactly this immersion in the truth that consecrates us:
To put it another way,
Jesus is praying that we are filled with the Holy Spirit,
the Spirit of truth.
The reason for Jesus’ prayer for us is both simple and startling.
He says, in prayer to the Father,
As you sent me into the world,
I have sent them into the world.
As you sent me…I sent them
Jesus prays for us to be consecrated in the truth about God,
made holy by God’s love shown in Jesus,
exactly so that we can continue Jesus’ work:
living lives dedicated to the Father’s will,
and proclaiming God’s love and mercy.
May our hearts be touched and our spirits moved by Jesus’ prayer.
Let us make it our own:
May the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, consecrate us.
Come Holy Spirit.