7th Sunday of Easter 25
Acts 7:55-60; Apocalypse 22: 12-20; John 17:20-26
Last week, it seemed to me that there were three statements which formed focal points in the day’s Gospel: today, I would suggest that there are three words which are “come”, “one”, and “love”.
Let’s take “come” first of all. Were it not for a final blessing—“the grace of the Lod Jesus be with you all”—the Bible would end with the call “Come, Lord Jesus”. The Book which we identify as the word of God effectively ends with a prayer that Jesus, who is Lord, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, will come.
Come how? Come when? Come where? “Ah, that’s easy,” you may say. “Come in glory at the end of time”—and you will be correct. We do indeed pray for the Second Coming of Christ, when the glorified Jesus will return in that glory to judge the world, and to call His people to Himself. That is how the early Church interpreted this prayer. They believed that the end of the world was imminent, and prayed that it would happen in their lifetime.
The end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ may occur in our lifetime: the increasing degradation of planet Earth, which is liable to accelerate with the election of climate change denying governments and, in this country, of similarly minded Local Authorities, may make that event more likely than in former ages. Yet whilst we do pray for Jesus to return in glory, we do not have the right to hasten that coming by wilfully destroying our world, any more than we have the right to hasten our own deaths by self-destructive lifestyles. The end of things must happen in God’s own way, and in God’s own time.
Yet this prayer “Come Lord Jesus” has a second and deeper meaning. We should recall at all times something of which we are reminded each Advent, assuming that we do not reduce Advent to nothing more than a preparation, however spiritual, for the Feast of Christmas. Advent too entails a preparation for the Second Coming. In addition, we need to recall St. Bernard’s words about a “third coming, between the other two” as he expresses it. We pray, in Advent, but also throughout the year, that Jesus will come more completely into our lives today, here and now, changing those lives and changing the world by his presence. Thus, every day, we should make those closing words of the Bible our own: “Come Lord Jesus”, not only at the end of time but today and every day.
Moving on to the word “one” we find it four times in the six verses of today’s Gospel. In verse 21 of this High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, as it is known, Our Lord prays for those who believe in Him “that they may all be one, just as you Father are in me, and I in you”. In the following verse He adds “That they may be one, even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly (or ‘ultimately’) one” in order that the world may believe in God’s love.
In this prayer, therefore, which John sets in the supreme context of the Last Supper, Jesus the High Priest prays repeatedly for the complete unity of all who believe in Him. This then must be our prayer too. Great progress has been made since the Second Vatican Council sixty years ago, yet there is also another trend which currently acts against unity.
This is the rise of self-styled “evangelical” churches which, ironically, ignore the Gospel (evangelium) from which they draw their name, by giving little or no importance to the Eucharist. In some places, particularly in South America, they are actually drawing people away from the Catholic Church in which, as the Council reminded us, the Church founded by Christ “subsists”. Pope Francis made great strides in drawing these groups towards unity, but we must still pray more earnestly that the Holy Spirit will reveal to them the centrality of the Eucharist.
As the prayer of Jesus reveals, unity is to model that unity between the Father and the Son which is itself the Holy Spirit, and is the source and sign of the love within the Trinity, and of God’s love for the world. This love, the third of today’s words, undergirds not only the whole of Jesus’ prayer, but also the whole of His mission. It is the reason for our prayer “Come” and for the desire for unity. COME, Lord Jesus, that we may be ONE in your LOVE.
