Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Lectionary: 299

Flowering tree
at the VA

Because we celebrated the feast of the Apostle Matthias yesterday we did not read the first verses of John 17, Jesus "priestly prayer." In today's gospel we pick up the story: 

Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed, saying:“Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me,so that they may be one just as we are one.

In 1970, Stephen Stills wrote what might be America's national anthem, "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." The obvious subtext is a sexual relationship; a tryst of convenience between "consenting adults" who find one another not entirely repulsive.

Millions of men and women, moving continually upward in their careers, moving laterally from job to job, and geographically from city to city, discover they cannot be with the "one" they love, so they love the ones they're with. Friendships, families and marriage devolve into temporary contracts of mutual hunger between uncommitted parties. Because "relationships" lack commitment they are laden with anxiety and mental illness spreads like a California wildfire.

They are certainly the people -- but that is not the love -- for which Our Savior died.

In his priestly prayer, Jesus consecrates himself to a love characterized by "oneness" -- the cohesion of the group. This is an essential theme of this 17th chapter, "that they may be one." Later in the week we will hear three verses from the same chapter:

...so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one  as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one  that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.

This is the love for which Jesus will take up his cross and lead us to Calvary. It's not for people who fall into and fall out of temporary romances.

Oneness should describe the family, the religious community, the monastery, the parish and other Christian communities. It is our standard and our goal. It may begin with the married couple but must go beyond them as their relationship opens to children and grandchildren, neighbors, church and world.

But, just as often, oneness does not begin with the married couple. Historically, it began when Jesus drew his disciples together to celebrate the Last Supper.

The Christian joins this community because Jesus has drawn her to it. She stays because she wants to give more of herself to it; and because she needs its inspiration and encouragement.

When the challenge of remaining in the Church becomes a cross too heavy to bear -- as it will -- she begs the Lord for greater strength. She does not quit -- ever.

People tell me they have left this or that church because they were not "being fed." But they will never find a church to meet their needs because they don't know what they need.

What I need to do is give more. I must give more of myself because it's not about me. I must give more courageously and freely. I must receive more freely, more gladly and more gratefully -- without the hidden agenda of my preferences.


The same picture through
kalaidoscope.

For it is in giving that we receive, in pardoning that we are pardoned, and in dying that we are born to eternal life.

When he invites us to take up the cross and follow him, Jesus assures us this is not an easy road to follow.