“If anyone does not, according to the Holy Fathers, confess truly and properly that the holy and ever-virgin and immaculate Mary is the Mother of God… having conceived Him without seed… and having incorruptibly borne Him, her virginity remaining indestructible also after His birth, let him be condemned.” – The Lateran Council (649 AD)
Gospel Reading for Tuesday in the Seventh week of Easter – John 17:1-11
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify thy Son that the Son may glorify thee, since thou hast given him power over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom thou hast given him.
And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. I glorified thee on earth, having accomplished the work which thou gavest me to do; and now, Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made.
“I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world; thine they were, and thou gavest them to me, and they have kept thy word. Now they know that everything that thou hast given me is from thee; for I have given them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from thee; and they have believed that thou didst send me. I am praying for them; I am not praying for the world but for those whom thou hast given me, for they are thine; all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to thee. Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.
What do the Fathers say?
St John CHRYSOSTOM. After having said, In the world ye shall have tribulation, our Lord turns from admonition to prayer; thus teaching us in our tribulations to abandon all other things, and flee to God.
He lifted up His eyes to heaven to teach us intentness in our prayers: that we should stand with uplifted eyes, not of the body only, but of the mind.
St HILARY. He does not say that the day, or the time, but that the hour is come. An hour is a portion of a day. What was this hour?
He was now to be spit upon, scourged, crucified. But the Father glorifies the Son.
The sun failed in its course, and with it all the other elements felt that death. The earth trembled under the weight of our Lord hanging on the Cross, and testified that it had not power to hold within it Him who was dying.
The Centurion proclaimed, Truly this was the Son of God. (Matt. 27:54) The event answered the prediction.
Our Lord said, Glorify Thy Son, testifying that He was not the Son in name only.
Thy Son, He said. Many of us are sons of God; but not such is the Son. For He is the proper, true Son by nature, not by adoption, in truth, not in name, by birth, not by creation. Therefore after His glorifying, for the manifestation of the truth there came confession. The Centurion confesses Him to be the true Son of God, so that none of His believers might doubt what one of His persecutors could not deny.
St AUGUSTINE. But if He was glorified by His Passion, how much more by His Resurrection? For His Passion rather showed His humility than His glory.
So we must understand, Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son, to mean, the hour is come for sowing the seed, i.e.humility; defer not the fruit, i.e. glory.
But it is justly asked, how the Son can glorify the Father, when the eternal glory of the Father never experienced abasement in the form of man, and in respect of its own Divine perfection, does not admit of being added to. But among men this glory was less when God was only known in Judæa; and therefore the Son glorified the Father, when the Gospel of Christ spread the knowledge of the Father among the Gentiles. Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee; i. e. Raise Me from the dead, that by Me You may be known to the whole world. Then He unfolds further the manner in which the Son glorifies the Father; As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom thou hast given him.
St HILARY. Being made flesh Himself, He was about to restore eternal life to frail, corporeal, and mortal man.
This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God. To know the only true God is life, but this alone does not constitute life. What else then is added? And Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.
Sources:
Bible readings from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Second Catholic Edition, copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Quotes of the Fathers from Thomas Aquinas’ Catena Aurea Translated by St John Henry Newman
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