May 28 2006

Jn 17:11b-19 Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying: “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one. When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you. I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely. I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.” "so that they may share my joy completely..." Jesus knows that his leaving will be mourned as a loss. He recalls the rejection he suffered with patience from the world, knowing that it was born of ignorance. He prays here that we may be consecrated in the truth. The word of God is the light and the truth and the way to joy and life in Christ. With the living Word comes the presence the illumination and the path to the kingdom.

Christ is with us always. When I take a step or turn away from the truth or hide the truth or bend it...my mind and heart and soul are being drawn from God. A life in God and Christ and the Spirit is walked in the Light of the truth that yields great wholeness of being to be as Saint Irenaeus says the glory of God in one fully alive. There are sufferings that come with the way of the truth and following the Word. Christ is not of this world and as a follower of Christ my eyes need to be set on the straight furrow and not looking back. With eyes of "the prize" the joy of walking in the light is a filling peace that gives in ways unanticipated in with a fullness that is not experienced any other way.

I pray this morning especially for the young adults in the world that they may have the light of faith in their lives.