I pray not only for these,
but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
so that they may all be one
Jesus saw beyond his present moment together with his disciples to the age of those who would believe through their testimony, the age of the Church. He prayed for women and men of every age who would believe the word of the disciples, including ourselves, that we would all be one. We read yesterday that the evil one would oppose the work of the disciples, and sow lies to attempt to break the unity Jesus desired for his Church. Thus we are given to understand that this unity that Jesus desired was to have its basis in a community consecrated to the truth. It was not to be a thin or superficial unity, not merely an external conformity of appearance, but a genuine communion of love, based in the truth of the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father. This truth of necessity excluded many falsehoods about love, but always for the sake of preserving the purity of genuine interpersonal communion. Only such love can bring us to perfection as one. In a world like ours where every individual decides for herself the definition of love any overlap is purely coincidental and we end up all pursuing our own isolated projects. We base our unity on lesser elements like a shared sense of persecution and can't find our way to a unity broad enough for all humankind. But it was just for such a broad and robust unity that Jesus prayed.
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.
It is one thing to wax elegant about this great gift of love and union that Jesus gave to his Church. It is another to actually assess the degree to which the Church is availing herself of that gift. She is meant to be a witness to the whole world of the reality of the love of the Father and the Son for the world. Yet often we see something little better than the dispute between the Pharisees and the Sadducees in our reading from Acts. Jesus prayed for unity in the Church, and this guaranteed access to truth the possibility of our sharing in the communion of the Father and the Son to all the ages. But it did not guarantee that we would so maximally avail ourselves of the gift as to be the best possible witnesses to the world. The world tends to focus on our conflicts, failings and flaws. And who can blame them? Such flaws seem to give the lie to the claims we make. The hidden inner life of the Church that really does remain luminously present is easier to ignore. This is why we can't be content with the way things are at present but must, each in our own sphere, according to the unique gifts we have been given, strive for unity. This may be as simple as opening ourselves to relationships with those in the Church who seem to think differently, and with whom we might have no natural affection. We may do this not so much from a hope of changing such individuals as from a hope that, through genuine relationship, the Holy Spirit may change us both.
Father, they are your gift to me.
When we realize that everyone we meet is an actual or potential gift of the Father to Jesus we ought to begin to treat them differently, even with something like reverential fear. Jesus desires that we be drawn by love into the fullness of the love that he himself receives from the Father. This is the intended destiny of every human being, whether they know the Father yet or not. And so our mission be the same as was Jesus own mission, and must proceed with the urgency that defined his.
I made known to them your name and I will make it known,
that the love with which you loved me
may be in them and I in them.
It is when we are caught up in this mission, something much bigger than ourselves and our pet projects, that we may become courageous witnesses. We see this exemplified in Saint Paul:
The following night the Lord stood by him and said, "Take courage.
For just as you have borne witness to my cause in Jerusalem,
so you must also bear witness in Rome."
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