Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I was at the twenty-fifth anniversary of a priest this past week who has been the rector of a missionary seminary for most of those years. It was impressive what most of the priests and seminarians said about him and how God was acting through him during that time. It made me think, what will they say about me at my twenty-fifth, which is nine years away? Will I be alive and coherent or drooling? Will I have given glory to God in those years? Perhaps, you can ask yourselves the same question. What has God done in your life after twenty-five years of marriage or being in a parish for that amount of time or much longer? Did you give glory to God through your life, and help others to do the same?
To give glory to God means did you or someone close to you return to the Church through your friendship, or was your marriage saved through the help of God, or did you have another child after not being able to or not being open to it for years, or did you handle a crisis in the family with faith and peace? If you did something like this that was out of character for you and you saw that it was through the grace of God, then this is to give glory to God, and not yourself.
This is what we see Jesus doing in this gospel (John 17: 20-26). His mission is to make know the name of God, which means to make his person and his nature known. Just think of how many names Jesus used to describe himself or his Father. I am the Bread of Life, the Good Shepherd, the Gate, the Way, the Door, the Vine, and the Truth. All of these names show us something of the Father, incompletely and yet they reveal his person to us, and to the world. He does this little by little or else the apostles would have exploded.
Earlier in John’s gospel Philip implies that he is expecting some marvelous manifestation of the Father. Christ chides him and says if you see me you see the Father, what more do you need? Maybe we are expecting something spectacular and we miss the ordinary way that God acts and continues to act in your life. He speaks to us through the events of life: someone dies or gets sick or you lose your job or you hear something at church that gives a new dimension to your way of thinking.
The unity of a married couple or of a church community can also give glory to God, or give witness to him. This unity or communion somehow helps people to see that God exists. How could these two people who are so opposite stay together after so many difficulties? It could only be a work of God, not of them. For me to sell my goods and give to the poor can be only an act of God in me. On my own it is impossible; I am too attached to my money, to my goods. I could never do that.
If we read chapter seventeen of St. John we see the heart of Christ. He prays that he will be able to give glory to his Father. He asks for the holiness of his apostles and disciples, for the unity of this primitive Church, and for their ability to share the good news with others. What more could he pray for? And what a great list it is for us. Our aim in life ought to be like Christ’s: I finished the work that he gave me!
Stephen also shows us something beautiful. He looks up to the heaven, to the Lord, even when they are stoning him. He sees the Lord and the many graces and mercies shown him in his life. The Son of God stands up to receive him in heaven, to greet the first martyr.
A cynic might say, why didn’t God help him? We can say: God did help him. How could he have died in such peace and with such forgiveness without the help of God? His death was a true liberation for the early Church which might have become a Jewish sect. His death led them to go to Samaria, of all places, and to the gentiles, to you and me. It was this death that followed John the Baptist, and Christ, that led them to go outside their Jewish circle to announce this good news. Paul never forgot this. He constantly refers to it in his writings, which meant he must have spoken about it all the time.
All the readings say the same thing: look up. Don’t look at yourself and your sins. Don’t look down on the sins of others. Look up to heaven, to Jesus Christ. Wait with the whole Church and ask for the Holy Spirit to come to you, as we prepare for Pentecost.
The Eucharist we celebrate today and every day is a response to what God is doing in our lives. The Spirit and the bride, which is the Church, say to us: come, come with all the saints and give glory to God!