The seventh week of Easter continues to read the great Johannine prayer of Jesus alongside Paul's farewell to the elders of Ephesus. Today both texts turn to the same hinge: those entrusted are also those sent. The mission begins where the prayer leaves off.
"Holy Father, keep them in your name, the name that you gave me, that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I guarded them in your name, the name that you gave me; I protected them, and not one of them was lost except the one who chose to be lost, so that scripture might be fulfilled. 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. 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. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth." (Jn 17:11b-19)
The liturgy of the seventh week of Easter continues to hold us inside the long prayer of Jesus and the long farewell of Paul. Yesterday we heard the opening of each — "Father, the hour has come", and Paul beginning to take stock of his ministry in Ephesus. Today both speeches turn to a new question: not what has been done, but what is now being entrusted to those who remain.
Jesus's prayer arrives at unity. "Père saint, garde mes disciples unis dans ton nom, le nom que tu m'as donné, pour qu'ils soient un, comme nous-mêmes" (Jn 17, 11). This unity is not a managed agreement; it is a participation in the very life of the Trinity. The disciples are to be one with the unity that the Father and the Son already are. The verb the Gospel uses for "keep" is tēreō — to watch over, to preserve — the same verb Paul will use later when he tells the Ephesians to watch over their flock.
The prayer moves quickly through the situation: "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." The Greek misein — to hate — is strong, almost too strong for our ear. But the Gospel of John does not soften it. The disciples find themselves where Jesus stood: in the world but not of it, the bearers of a word that the world does not always recognise as gift. The prayer does not ask for them to be withdrawn from this place. It asks for their consecration.
"Sanctifie-les dans la vérité ; ta parole est vérité" (Jn 17, 17). Hagiazō — to set apart for God, to consecrate. And in the next breath, Jesus says the astonishing thing: "And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth" (Jn 17, 19). The consecration of the disciples flows from the consecration of the Lord. He sets himself apart — toward the Cross — for them, so that they can be set apart in the truth that the Cross will reveal.
Paul, ending his Miletus farewell, says the same thing in pastoral key. "Veillez sur vous-mêmes, et sur tout le troupeau dont l'Esprit Saint vous a établis responsables" (Ac 20, 28). The watching-over he received from Christ — "j'ai veillé sur eux", in the prayer of John 17 — he passes on. And he ends with the entrustment that defines a true farewell: "Je vous confie à Dieu et à la parole de sa grâce, lui qui a le pouvoir de construire l'édifice" (Ac 20, 32). Paul cannot continue to build; God can. The apostle's last word is to step aside, with confidence.
In the spirit of Bethlehem, this is read in a particular key: the missionary is sent into the world — "de même que tu m'as envoyé dans le monde, moi aussi, je les ai envoyés dans le monde" (Jn 17, 18) — but with the consciousness that the unity and the sanctification are gifts received, not achievements. For us, the SMB, the brotherhood — both internal among confrères and external with the people encountered — is constitutive. The missionary fraternity is the visible sign of the Johannine ut unum sint: that the world may see and believe.
Saint Bernardine of Siena, whose optional memorial falls today, spent his life preaching the name of Jesus across Italy — the IHS monogram he made famous was for him a kind of compressed prayer, the Name in which Jesus asks the Father to keep his disciples. There is something fitting in receiving today's Gospel through Bernardine's voice: it is precisely the Holy Name that holds the fraternity together when the world rejects it.
What does this ask of us, on this Wednesday of the seventh week of Easter? To accept that we are kept by a prayer that has been said for us — "j'ai veillé sur eux" — and not first by our own effort. To remember that we are sent, not extracted; consecrated, not protected. And to step aside, when our hour comes, with the same confidence as Paul: "Je vous confie à Dieu et à la parole de sa grâce."
Prayer of the Day
Holy Father, keep us united in your Name. Sanctify us in your truth, as your Son sanctified himself for us. Teach us not to ask for the world to leave us alone, but to ask for the grace to remain in it as he remained — bearing your word without belonging to its measures. And when our hour comes, give us the confidence of Paul, to commend those we have served to your hands and to step quietly aside. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
For Meditation
- What does it mean for us that the unity we are asked to live is already the unity of the Father and the Son?
- Where in our life are we trying to protect what has been entrusted to us, when we are simply asked to commend it to God?
- For whom would we today dare to say, with Christ, "for their sakes I consecrate myself"?
