Seventh Sunday after Easter – Year B
May 12, 2024
Gospel Lectionary Text
John 17:6-19
17:6 "I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.
17:7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you;
17:8 for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.
17:9 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.
17:10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.
17:11 And 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.
17:12 While 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.
17:13 But 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.
17:14 I 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.
17:15 I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.
17:16 They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.
17:17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
17:18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.
17:19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
Context
In the seventh and final week of Eastertide, Jesus prays for unity, “that they may be one, as we are one.” It’s a fitting conclusion to the Easter celebration. Oneness, or union, is the ultimate point of Easter. Julian of Norwich referred to it as “oneing.”
What Easter makes available is the possibility of being “one,” or forming unity, in a way that might seem impossible. We are talking about a type of oneness in which our identity is formed, not over and against another, but with and for the other. This is what Easter opens up — the possibility of relationship without rivalry. Unity without uniformity. This is the kind of unity that God enjoys and makes available to us. This is Shalom.
Question
Can you recall a time when your identity or your community's identity was shaped in collaboration with "the other" rather than in opposition?
Reflections
Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:
Coming soon.
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Poetry
Excerpt from Jerusalem, Jerusalem
by James Carroll
“Christians affirm the Credo, Jews the Shema, Muslims the Shahada—all declaring that there is one God.38 But what does “one” mean? In a scientific age, it is taken as a number. God is thought of as a solitary entity, standing apart from all others, and therefore, it is thought, against all others. If this is the meaning of monotheism, then yes, such belief is inherently a source of conflict, not peace”…
“Moses Maimonides, the twelfth-century Jewish sage, rejected the idea that God’s “Oneness” is a category of quantity. In that sense, he wrote, “the term ‘one’ is just as inapplicable to God as the term ‘many.’”39 Instead of a unit, the “Oneness” of God affirms a unity. Oneness in this sense means not the being who stands apart, radically different and superior, but the being who is present as the reconciliation of all oppositions. That God is One means, as Isaiah saw, that the God of this people is the God of all people.40 Monotheism in this sense is not the source of conflict, but the source of conflict resolution.”…
“The Oneness of this God is not a number but a relationship with what exists. (Later, the followers of Jesus would recognize the same quality in his intimacy with the one he called Father, as in “The Father and I are one.”42 Jesus’ embodiment of God’s Oneness was what his followers recognized as his divinity.”
Prayer
Coming soon.