Saint of the day – Saint Bernardino of Siena, Priest
“As the moon has no light of its own, but receives all its brilliance and warmth from the reflection of the sun, so the glorious Virgin …is a most perfect mirror, completely filled with the light of the Eternal Word. She catches the fullness of His divine rays and pours them out upon the darkness of the world below.”
– St Bernadino
Gospel Reading for Wednesday in the Seventh week of Easter – John 17:11b-19
Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in thy name, which thou hast given me; I have guarded them, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one.
They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth. As thou didst send me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth.
What do the Fathers say?
St John CHRYSOSTOM. And now I am no more in the world: i. e. though I no longer appear in the flesh, I am glorified by those who die for Me, as for the Father, and preach Me as the Father.
St AUGUSTINE.
– We must not understand, I am no more in the world, metaphorically of the heart and life; for could there ever have been a time when He loved the things of the world? It remains then that He means that He was not in the world, as He had been before; i. e. that He was soon going away. He adds, And now I come to Thee.
And then He commends to His Father those whom He was about to leave: Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me. As man He prays God for His disciples, whom He received from God. But mark what follows: That they may be one, as We are: He does not say, That they may be one with Us, as We are one; but, that they may be one: that they may be one in their nature, as We are one in Ours.
For, in that He was God and man in one person, as man He prayed, as God He was one with Him to Whom He prayed.
– He does not say, That I and they may be one, though He might have said so in the sense, that He was the head of the Church, and the Church His body; not one thing, but one person: the head and the body being one Christ.
But showing that His divinity is consubstantial with the Father, He prays that His people may in like manner be one; but one in Christ, not only by the same nature, in which mortal man is made equal to the Angels, but also by the same will, agreeing most entirely in the same mind, and melted into one Spirit by the fire of love. This is the meaning of, That they may be one as We are: viz. that as the Father and the Son are one not only by equality of substance, but also in will, so they, meaning his followers, may be one not only by the union of nature, but by the union of love.
– The Son as man kept His disciples in the Father’s name, being placed among them in human form: the Father again kept them in the Son’s name, in that He heard those who asked in the Son’s name. But we must not take this carnally, as if the Father and Son kept us in turns, for the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost guard us at the same time: but Scripture does not raise us, except it stoop to us. Let us understand then that when our Lord says this, He is distinguishing the persons, not dividing the nature, so that when the Son was keeping His disciples by His bodily presence, the Father was waiting to succeed Him on His departure; but both kept them by spiritual power, and when the Son withdrew His bodily presence, He still held with the Father the spiritual keeping. For when the Son as man received them into His keeping, He did not take them from the Father’s keeping, and when the Father gave them into the Son’s keeping, it was to the Son as man, who at the same time was God. Those that Thou gavest Me I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition; i. e. the betrayer of Christ, predestined to perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
– Although they had not yet experienced the sufferings which they afterwards met with; He, as was His custom, puts the future into the past tense. The world hated them; because they are not of the world.
By nature they were of the world. It was given to them that they should not be of the world, even as He was not of the world; But though they were no longer of the world, it was still necessary that they should be in the world:
Jesus says I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world.
The Venerable BEDE. As if to say, The time is now at hand, when I shall be taken out of the world; and therefore it is necessary that they should be still left in the world, in order to preach Me and Thee to the world. But I pray that Thou shouldst keep them from every evil.
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
Artwork ex Wikimedia Commons