Father, the hour has come.
Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you
The hour of Jesus was the hour of the cross, because it was through the cross that the son was given glory, becoming the source of eternal life to all who believed. And it was by being obedient to this plan that he revealed and glorified the Father who sent him for this work. But if things had ended at the cross it would have been tragic rather than glorious. Therefore this mutual exchange of glory was ongoing. It continued as Jesus rose from the dead and his humanity was transformed to share in the glory that the Word possessed before the world began. In demonstrating that his Father's plan had been vindicated and by preparing his disciples to receive the Spirit of his Father Jesus continued to use this new manifestation of glory for the sake of the Father.
I glorified you on earth
by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.
Now glorify me, Father, with you,
with the glory that I had with you before the world began.
The glorification of the Son by the Father and the Father by the Son didn't begin or end on earth. The difference was that the human nature of Jesus was now made a participant in that glory, and by extension, any who were united to him. Therefore this prayer of Jesus was not only about the brief darkness of Good Friday. It was about the ongoing participation of the Church in the life of God, something for which Good Friday created the possibility and necessary preconditions. Good Friday meant that the door to the heaven, to the Father, and to eternal life, had been opened, and could never be closed again. It meant that people could participate in the sharing of the glory of the Father and the Son in a way that no obstacle, not sin, not even death itself, could finally prevent.
I pray for them.
We see that Jesus glorified the Father by keeping the disciples safe and teaching them the words the Father gave him. He perfected this by making a sacrificial offering of himself in which the members of his Body could participate. His ongoing prayer in heaven is all about this mutual gift of himself to the Father, and his Father's gift to him. His prayer includes making our own participation in this mutual glorification possible. In this way his self-offering is ever present before the Father. But while his disciples remained in the world they needed this sacrifice to be made present and efficacious for them. This was the reality which, in the mass, where heaven touched earth, was most deeply present. The heavenly liturgy, for which the high priestly prayer of Jesus can be seen as a kind of window, never ceases, from the rising of the sun to its setting.
In the high priestly prayer of Jesus we see petitions that apply both during the crucifixion and during the eternal glorification of Jesus. We begin to get a hint of how his one offering on earth is present eternally in heaven. We begin to get a sense of how central this is to the heart of Jesus. And hopefully our own desire to have our lives shaped by this prayer is kindled.
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