Friends,
Jesus’ prayer in today’s Gospel sums up his wonderful work as he is
about to return to his Father. Jesus was, in his very person, the
meeting of heaven and earth. God and humanity came together in him, and
his entire ministry was the outward expression of that inward identity.
By calling a scattered Israel to unity, inviting the poor to table
fellowship, healing the sick in body and heart, and embodying the path
of forgiveness and love, Jesus was bringing God’s will and purpose to
earth.
Now,
in his Passion and Death, Jesus brought heaven all the way down into
the world. He carried the divine light into the darkest places of the
human condition—hatred, cruelty, violence, corruption, stupidity,
suffering, and death itself—and thereby transformed them. And the proof
that heaven is able to transform
earth is, of course, the Resurrection.
Now
we know that cruelty, hatred, violence, fear, suffering, and death are
not the most powerful forces in the world. Now we know that the divine
love is more powerful. God’s kingdom has, in principle, broken the
kingdoms of the world, which thrive upon, and in turn produce, those
very negativities.
Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Lectionary: 298
From Miletus Paul had the presbyters
of the Church at Ephesus summoned.
When they came to him, he addressed them,
"You know how I lived among you
the whole time from the day I first came to the province of Asia.
I served the Lord with all humility
and with the tears and trials that came to me
because of the plots of the Jews,
and I did not at all shrink from telling you
what was for your benefit,
or from teaching you in public or in your homes.
I earnestly bore witness for both Jews and Greeks
to repentance before God and to faith in our Lord Jesus.
But now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem.
What will happen to me there I do not know,
except that in one city after another
the Holy Spirit has been warning me
that imprisonment and hardships await me.
Yet I consider life of no importance to me,
if only I may finish my course
and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus,
to bear witness to the Gospel of God's grace.
"But now I know that none of you
to whom I preached the kingdom during my travels
will ever see my face again.
And so I solemnly declare to you this day
that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you,
for I did not shrink from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God."
Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said,
"Father, the hour has come.
Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you,
just as you gave him authority over all people,
so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him.
Now this is eternal life,
that they should know you, the only true God,
and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
I glorified you on earth
by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.
Now glorify me, Father, with you,
with the glory that I had with you before the world began.
"I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world.
They belonged to you, and you gave them to me,
and they have kept your word.
Now they know that everything you gave me is from you,
because the words you gave to me I have given to them,
and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you,
and they have believed that you sent me.
I pray for them.
I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me,
because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours
and everything of yours is mine,
and I have been glorified in them.
And now I will no longer be in the world,
but they are in the world, while I am coming to you."
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