Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him power over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him."- St. John 17:1, 2
The Gospel for the seventh and final week of Eastertide puts us back in the Cenacle, the Upper Room. We’re taken back to that night of nights, when our Lord gave us so much, and when He taught us so much. On that night He prayed His great High Priestly prayer, entrusting us to the purpose and mission for which we have been created.
Our Lord’s aim and mission during His earthly ministry was to glorify His heavenly Father by His obedience. All He said and did gave glory to His Father. On the eve of His sacrifice on the cross and in the presence of His disciples, Jesus made His high priestly prayer: "Holy Father, keep them in your name that they may be one as we are one". Our Lord prayed for the unity of His disciples and for all who would believe in Him. His prayer for His people is that we be united with God the Father in His Son through His Holy Spirit and so be joined together in unity with all who are members of Christ's body.
What was it that motivated Jesus to lay down His life on the cross as the atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world? It was love – divine love - love for His Father in heaven and love for each one of us who are made in the image and likeness of God. Jesus was sent into the world by His Father for a purpose, and that purpose was a mission of love to free us from slavery to sin – slavery to Satan, to fear, to death, to hopelessness. Jesus saw glory in the cross rather than shame. Obedience to His Father's will was His glory. Jesus kept His Father's word even when, on that dark night in Gethsemane, He was tempted to forgo the cross. Jesus did not rely on His own human resources and strength to accomplish His Father's will. He trusted in His Father to give Him strength, courage, and perseverance in the face of opposition, trials, and temptation.
Because God created us for a purpose and a mission, we also must take up our cross and follow the Lord Jesus wherever He may call us. He will give us the strength and power of the Holy Spirit to live as His disciples. St. John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote: "God has created me to do him some definite service; he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission - I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for nothing. Therefore, I will trust him. Whatever, wherever I am, I cannot be thrown away." And so we must trust in God and in His call and purpose for our life.
Jesus prayed that His disciples would be sanctified and consecrated in God's truth and holiness. The scriptural word for “consecration” comes from the same Hebrew word which means “holy” or “set apart for God.” And it also means to be equipped with the qualities which will enable us to fulfill our vocation.
Just as Jesus was called by the Father to serve in holiness and truth, so we, too, are called and equipped for the task of serving God in the world as His ambassadors. God's truth frees us from ignorance and the deception of sin. It reveals to us God's goodness, love, and wisdom. And it gives us a thirst for God's holiness.
The Holy Spirit is the source and giver of all holiness. As we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives, He transforms us by His purifying fire and changes us into the likeness of Christ.
May our lives be consecrated to God, may we be wholly pleasing to God. May we be sanctified in God’s truth, and may we be guided by the Holy Spirit so that we follow faithfully wherever God leads us.
O God, the King of Glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven: we beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thy Holy Spirit to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before; who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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Pictured: “The High Priestly Prayer” by Eugène Burnand (1850-1921)