One-ing and JOY ~ reflex on John 17:11-20

Prayer is an opening – and therefore a kind of revelation – of the heart. So in today’s Gospel, as we hear Jesus pray to the Father, we glimpse the sentiments of his holy Heart. And what do we see? His loving trust in the Father, and his intense love for us.

Jesus is about to enter his agony, and his final concerns are for his disciples. He asks the Father to “keep” them, as he had protected and guarded them. He is entrusting them now to the Father.

And he reveals also a deep theological Truth: that we are all ONE in Christ, just as he is one with the Father! This was something entirely new. The Chosen People knew they were chosen by God, but they had no aspirations of being ONE with God! Here Jesus points to the goal of all creation, the goal of his Incarnation, the goal of the Paschal Mystery into which he is entering: “that they may be one just as we are one… even as You, Father, are in me, and I in You, that they also may be in us… that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and You in me, that they may become perfectly one” (Jn 19-23).

Perfectly one with each other, one with Christ, united in the heart of the Trinity, “so that they may share my joy completely.” In unity is JOY. This is the goal of all that God has done and is doing: to share His JOY, which springs from love, which brings union.

Jesus came with this mission, and it is our mission too: “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.”

This is why we say we are “in the world, but not of the world” – we are made by Love, to Love, for Love. We are journeying through this world, fighting the enemies of love, finding ways to love, bringing love to others, so that we establish real communion with others in Christ. In journeying, fighting, and serving in love in this world, we find joy. And at the end of our worldly work, we will enjoy endless joy in the Arms of Love.