In the Gospel of today, John 17: 1-11a, Jesus says to His
Father: “Father, the hour has come. Give
glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you….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.” Jesus is about to be arrested, condemned to
death, scourged, crowned with thorns in mockery of His Kingship, and crucified.
Three days later, death having no power
over the Son of God, Jesus is risen—glorified, with the Father, with the glory that He had with the Father
before the world was created.
Like Jesus, Paul, in the liturgy’s first reading, Acts 20:
17-27, is looking back on his life as well and is about to go to Jerusalem,
where, like Jesus, he faces hardships and imprisonment. Paul can testify that, like Jesus, he “did
not shrink from telling you what was for your benefit, or from teaching you in
public or in your homes. I earnestly bore witness for both Jews and Greeks to
repentance before God and to faith in our Lord Jesus.”
You and I have also been sent here to accomplish a task, a
mission, given to us by the Father through the Holy Spirit, the Advocate sent
to us by Jesus. Like Paul and Jesus, as
we bring our wills into harmony with God’s will for us, as we give glory to God
by the Gospel values we embrace, we will meet hardship, be mocked and
ridiculed. We will, from time to time, be rejected on account of our beliefs in the
Lord God, in Christ Jesus. Disappointments,
frustration, pain are part of anyone’s
faith journey. At the end of our lives,
hopefully, like Paul and Jesus, if we
have striven to give glory to God by our lives, if we have come to know the
Father, the only true God, and the one whom the Father sent, Jesus Christ (cf
John 17: 3), we can confidently look
forward to being glorified with our Father in heaven.
At the end of this day, will I be able to say, as Jesus did, "Father, I have accomplished the work you gave me to do?"
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