Gospel: John 17:11-26

 

Today’s Gospel gives us the third and last part of the Priestly Prayer, in which Jesus looks toward the future and manifests His great desire for unity among us, His disciples, and that all may remain in the love which unifies, because without love and without unity we do not deserve credibility.

 

Jesus expands the horizon and prays to the Father. Here emerges Jesus’ great concern for unity which should exist in the communities. Unity does not mean uniformity, but rather to remain in love, in spite of tensions and conflicts. A love which unifies to the point of creating, among all, a profound unity like the unity which exists between Jesus and the Father. 

 

The unity in love revealed in the Trinity is the model for the communities. For this, through love among people, the communities reveal to the world the most profound message of Jesus. 

 

Jesus does not want to remain alone. Jesus is happy when we are all together with Him. He wants His disciples to have the same experience of the Father which He had. He wants us to know the Father and that He knows us. In the Bible, the word to know presupposes the experience of the presence of God living with the people of the community.

 

The Gospel of John helps us to understand the mystery of the Trinity. From the text of John we see that the mission of the Son is the supreme manifestation of the love of the Father.