Tuesday, May 23, 2023

23 May 2023 - to know the Lord


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.

Jesus came to the hour of the cross intentionally and not accidentally. It was a choice and not a weakness or a failure. He did so as the culmination of a life lived in obedience to the will of his Father. He glorified the Father with all that he was and, as a consequence, the Father would glorify him in turn, making even his humanity reveal to the world the glory that was never lacking to him in his divinity. Jesus acted out of love for the Father and the Father out of love for his Son. But they both together also acted out of love for their creatures. Their mutual love overflowed in such a way that it became the source of eternal life for those who would believe.

Now this is eternal life,
that they should know you, the only true God,
and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.

The knowledge about which Jesus spoke was not abstract, but deeply personal. Biblically, we speak of the way a husband 'knows' his wife, and this is much closer to the mark in the present case. It is a knowing the implicates us in the mutual love of the Father and the Son (the love that the Spirit himself is!), making us partakers of the divine nature. At present we have access to this eternal life through faith, which is in some ways like a preview of coming attractions, but which really does in some sense make future realities present and effective even here and now for believers. 

Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory (see Colossians 3:2-4).

Jesus desired to impart his words to the disciples, but in doing so he was not dealing in dead letters. Rather, as the one who was himself the Word of God, he was attempting to impart to his disciple everything that he himself was. This is why it is so important for us that we not stagnate in our faith but to ourselves continue to grow in understanding of what it means that Jesus came from the Father, to more and more learn to treasure what that implies about the very precious words he has given us from him.

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.

We do not struggle on our own to penetrate dense mysteries that are far too exulted for the human intellect. Rather, that we proceed it all in this faith and knowledge is a consequence of the fact that the Son himself asks it of the Father who in turn delights to answer his Son's every desire. This prayer of Jesus manifests in us as the Spirit who draws us by love into the one who is love itself.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love (see First John 4:7-8).

The results of becoming docile to the Son's gift of the Spirit is visible and evident in Saint Paul. We can see in Paul a heart that was shaped in the mold of the heart of Jesus himself, desiring nothing but to be give all that he himself had received. Life in this world no longer held sway over his mind or his desires because he was already attaining by faith to the eternal life that is the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ whom he sent.


No comments:

Post a Comment