Seventh Sunday of Easter – Year C

June 1, 2025

Gospel Lectionary Text

John 17:20-26
17:20 "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word,

17:21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

17:22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one,

17:23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

17:24 Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

17:25 "Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me.

17:26 I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

Context

Coming soon.

Question

Coming soon.

Reflections

Then the World Will Know

In all my time of writing for the Word From Below, in all the reflections I have submitted, I have never felt a text so relevant and impossible as the prayer of unity we find in our lectionary text this week. In my country, and in many places around the world, it seems that division...

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May they be One

Unity does not mean uniformity, but to remain in love, despite all tensions and all conflicts. It’s a love that creates a deep unity, like that which exists between Jesus and the Father. The unity in love revealed in the Trinity becomes the standard for our own relationships.

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Unity Without Enemies?

My favorite scientific experiment is the one conducted by Mark Twain. He placed a cat and a dog in a cage, and to his amazement they became friends. Encouraged, he added a rabbit, a fox, a goose, a squirrel and even some doves and a monkey. They too became friends and lived in peace. In…

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Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:

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.