Dear Parish Family,
On the seventh Sunday of Easter, we always read from the 17th chapter of John's Gospel.
This chapter of John's Gospel comes at the conclusion of Jesus' Farewell Discourse delivered
to the disciples at the Last Supper. The whole of this chapter is a prayer of Jesus, commending himself to the Father and expressing his care and concern for his disciples. At the end of this prayer,
Jesus and his disciples depart for the garden, and Jesus is arrested.
Several important themes appear in this prayer of Jesus. First, Jesus' prayer reaffirms the complete union between Jesus and the Father. Throughout John's Gospel, Jesus has been presented as the one who pre-existed with the Father and as the one sent by the Father to do his work on earth. In today's reading, we hear Jesus ask that the unity he experiences with the Father be extended to all who believe in him. He prays that we be one with each other, with him, and with the Father.
We are reminded that Christ is the source of Christian unity. Through Christ, we are united with one another and with God our Father.
Belief is a major theme in the Gospel of John. It begins in the prologue and continues in the response to Jesus' signs. Belief is the reason Jesus performs signs (2:11, 4:53, 6:69, 9:38) and the reason
signs have been recorded in the Gospel (20:30-31). Here Jesus prays not only for those who believe in him but for all who will come to believe in him. And he prays that the love of the Father in him may
also be in all who believe so that Jesus might be in them as well.
At the heart of the teachings of Jesus that we hear today are two teachings that are very important in our lives: forgiveness and acceptance of mistreatment. Jesus tells us “love your enemies, do good
to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” These teachings are so against our modern ways of thinking! Yes these same teachings would revolutionize our present
world if we all lived by them. The challenge is not to think to ourselves: “Nobody lives that way.” Rather, we can be thinking: “How can I live this way because Jesus has invited me to live this way.”
We hear Stephen praying for his stone-throwing killers that they be forgiven by God. Our prayers must open our hearts to forgiveness and to the acceptance of being treated badly. It is challenging to love
our enemies: the enemies of our country, the enemies of our families, our personal enemies, the enemies of our Church and whatever enemy there is. But the Lord is not just giving an exhortation, but rather a command. Let us love the outcasts, the marginalized ones in our time: anyone that we would not want to live with on a regular basis! Let us learn to do good for all of these enemies. Let us bless them and pray for them. What a world we can create together if we walk this path with our Lord Jesus Christ! At our encounter with our creator at the end of our life we ought to remember: “For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”
Fr. Thomas Kunnel