The seventh week of Easter reaches today the climax of Jesus's prayer at the Last Supper — the one place in the New Testament where Christ explicitly prays for us, those who will believe through the word of the apostles. The first reading places Paul at the same hinge: a courtroom in Jerusalem, and the Lord's night-time word to him: "It is necessary that you bear witness to me also in Rome."
"I am not praying for them only, but also for those who through their word shall believe in me. So may they all be one. Just as you, Father, are in me, and I am in you, so also may they be one in us: so that the world may believe that you have sent me. And the glory that you have given to me, I have given to them, so that they may be one, just as we also are one. I am in them, and you are in me. So may they be perfected as one. And may the world know that you have sent me and that you have loved them, just as you have also loved me. Father, I will that where I am, those whom you have given to me may also be with me, so that they may see my glory which you have given to me. For you loved me before the founding of the world. Father most just, the world has not known you. But I have known you. And these have known that you sent me. And I have made known your name to them, and I will make it known, so that the love in which you have loved me may be in them, and so that I may be in them." (Jn 17:20-26)
The seventh week of Easter reaches today the climax of the Johannine prayer. At the Last Supper, having prayed for those at table with him, Jesus now widens the prayer outward: "I am not praying for them only, but also for those who through their word shall believe in me" (Jn 17:20). This is the one place in the Gospels where Christ explicitly prays for us — for those who will come to believe through the word of the apostles, and through the word of those who received the word from them. The prayer crosses two thousand years and arrives at our pew.
What does it ask? Unity. But the unity Jesus asks is precise — teteleiōmenoi eis hen (Jn 17:23), "perfected into one." The Greek perfect participle says it: a unity that is brought to completion, not a unity that begins from us. The pattern is given in the same breath: "as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us." The ecclesial unity is not modelled on the Trinity. It is enfolded into the Trinity. The Church is one because she is taken up into the unity God already is.
And the purpose of this unity is missionary — twice repeated in five verses: "so that the world may believe", "so that the world may know". The unity of the disciples is the visible sign by which the Father's sending of the Son becomes credible. Where the disciples are not one, the world has reason to suspect that the Father did not really send the Son. The reverse is also true.
The first reading places this dynamic in the harsh light of a real courtroom. Paul, arrested in Jerusalem, is brought before the Sanhedrin. Knowing the assembly is divided between Sadducees and Pharisees on the question of the resurrection, he declares his Pharisaic credentials and his hope in the resurrection. The room erupts; the commander pulls him out by force. "Then, on the following night, the Lord stood near him and said: 'Be constant. For just as you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so also it is necessary for you to testify at Rome.'" (Acts 23:11).
Notice the word courage — the same word Jesus left to the disciples on Monday: "In the world you will have tribulation; but take courage, I have conquered the world" (Jn 16:33). The courage commanded in the night-time vision is the same courage promised in the Upper Room. The unity of Christ's prayer reaches Paul as a personal commission: keep going, the witness already given is to be carried one step further.
In the Society of Bethlehem, this Thursday is read in the key of brotherhood as mission. The Constitutions name fraternity — among confrères and with the people encountered — as a constitutive note of the missionary way. Where two or three are one in Christ, the world sees a Trinitarian glimpse, however faint. The SMB lives this not by argument but by long, patient communal life: the same table, the same prayer, the same disagreements absorbed in the same Christ.
The optional memorial today brings this to its furthest edge. Saint Christopher Magallanes (1869-1927) and his twenty-four companions were Mexican priests and laymen martyred during the Cristero persecution. They died in small groups, often after summary judgment, sometimes simply for having ministered. The Society of Bethlehem has its own grain-falling-into-the-ground list (Jn 12:24), but today's memorial gathers all the witnesses under the same Johannine prayer: "that they may become perfectly one", even unto blood. Their being one with Christ completed the unity for which he had prayed.
What does this ask of us, on this Thursday between Ascension and Pentecost? To recognise that we are inside the prayer of Jesus — that we were prayed for at the table of the Upper Room. To take seriously that our unity, where it is given, is missionary; and that our divisions, where they remain, also speak to the world. And to ask, with Paul in the courtroom and with the Mexican martyrs at the wall, for the courage to bear witness one step further than yesterday.
Scripture text: Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV), public domain.
Prayer of the Day
Holy Father, we have been prayed for. We have been named in your Son's prayer at the table, before the foundation of the world. Make us today perfectly one — not by our own strength but by being taken into your own unity. Give us the courage of Paul in the night-time vision, and the courage of the martyrs of every land, to bear witness one step further than yesterday. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
For Meditation
- What does it change to know that Jesus prayed for us by name at the Last Supper?
- Where in our communities is our disunity speaking against the credibility of the Gospel?
- What is the "one step further" of witness the Lord is asking of us this night?
