Priestly, diverse resilience
(Jn 17:20-26)
Jn seeks to clarify our universal aspiration, and to penetrate the way the Lord makes himself present in the disciples after Easter, so that the world above may approach and inundate, burst into ours.
Heaven influences, exhorts and radically transforms practical existence.
On earth we can have a direct and all-too-real experience of God, in the summit of discipleship and following, even if it is not immediate.
At the end of the Priestly Prayer, a salient concern emerges in Jesus: the 'Eucharistic' one par excellence.
The Jewish expectation of the Messiah becomes an expectation of Unity [not psychological and trivial, but a Gift from above].
On the subject of Glory, the apostles must not be confused.
The vehicle of Glory is love and the inescapable feasting together - just like in the Eucharist: the same divine Gold that comes to the surface and is offered again.
In prayerful form, the Lord makes memorial of all those who throughout history will believe in Him, through the word and testimony of the disciples, who become the centre of attraction and union.
Unlike ancient religions, He wants the life of Faith to be characterised not by the 'truth' one has, but by the 'truth' one makes.
The weight of the divine manifestation must no longer be traced in formulae and correct dogmas: disputes fester.
God's demonstration before humanity cannot be in an external code that makes everyone dependent, wiping the slate clean of dreamy eccentricities.
We do not bear witness to the Immense on earth in the coherent capacities of understanding and willing according to procedure.
To formulate definitions it is enough to bring intellectual energies to bear.
To defend, promote and rejoice in life, one must be animated by the same Spirit of God, in His work of primary Unity.
The earthly love that reflects it is no longer capacity, but possibility.
In this way, the divine Nucleus in its specific weight has nothing immediately satisfying and triumphant about it; on the contrary, much that is serviceable and liberating.
If the Church contemplates and displays the Glory of Christ, it is because it has been able to place itself in its proper place, to the point of giving life and substance: 'judging' reality too, but from the criterion of the Cross (cf. v.24).
In short, the friendship that unveils what is heavenly and primal [not transient and causal] does not lie in knowing, concatenating, reproducing; in affirming, or renouncing; not even in parrying blows and advancing.
Nor is a form of 'justice' that gives each his own sufficient - for from division to division it would shatter concord: summum jus summa iniuria; jus summum saepe summa est malitia.
This would crumble any firm polyhedral understanding - and if carried through to the end, would lead to the worst injustices.
Even for future pilgrims in Him, Christ asks God for Communion - conviviality of differences: not in the unilateral form, but from which to take meaning.
The priority Unity he cares about is that which is introduced by transmitting the divine reciprocity between Father and Son.
It emerges precisely as we allow the ferment that constitutes us brothers, His Body, to act in us.
For the world to believe that Jesus is the Envoy, friends must be in the Son and in the Father - as the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son.
From such a relationship, cemented with intimate immanence, all our unions take their true meaning; weight, transparency, passage, and development.
Fraternities that realise Redemption in history, thanks to a tolerant synergy.
Each person can be in the other, only in the sharing of 'crafted' love.
This is the manifestation [glory] of the divine: a mutual indwelling, which makes us One Body - otherwise one is not credible. Just as the incarnation of God in Christ would not be credible.
Faith is the transmission of authentic glory: Faith and Glory commensurate such concatenation of participation.
And Father "just" (v.25) refers to the distinction between the world and the small assemblies of mutual adherence in the early days, the only places where life could be perceived.
Only in the reciprocity reflected in the One arisen can one live intensely.
The experience of Oneness in God - the most irrefutable sign of His Presence - was indeed profound in the Johannine communities.
Those authentic assemblies were an environment that helped to bring out the hidden sides.
In such churches without preclusion, the fascination of those sides of the Oneness that the customary world valued as imbalances and defects, instead of opportunities for special enrichment: human, cultural, spiritual - and personal callings - was revealed.
The note that makes the assembly of the sons recognisable is precisely the becoming One in the Source of being - not the remaining uniform.
Glory of the beginnings.A different Glory, one that recovers opposites and does not pursue duplicity (perhaps using God's name as a screen and turncoat).
To protect his own from fears of organised and even sacred reprisals [a litmus test of the goodness of values and choices] Jesus took care to make it clear to what level of realisation and consideration he was leading the disciples.
The Trinity is a unique gushing Source; motive, energy, and motor - a true strength, which gives stimulus, form, colour, to the most diverse situations and even to rejection.
It is to be expected that dislikes, attempts at derision and worse will arise towards those who extend the horizon.
Superficial and vain installed do not deserve any credibility. But they are not willing to be unmasked. And they certainly do not renounce counterfeit positions, on which instead they willingly insist.
It also applies to artfully constructed fences over centuries of strife, even between Christian denominations.
Comparing their history of absurd conflicts, this Gospel seems to say: none of them has really experienced the Father.
None of them has seen and understood the face of the other, except for the setting up of a contrived do-nothing identity, built on the most trivial opposition.
As Pope Francis has suggested, this is all to cover up venal interests and fatuous superstitions; nothing else.
On the other hand, men today as they did then - seeing a non-confrontational, servant and poor Church - would contemplate the Crucified One.
They would experience divine glory.
Here is the priestly prayer of Jesus - genuinely transcending the centuries; contemporary without a wrinkle.
To internalise and live the message:
What do you think of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue? Does it enrich or demoralise you?
Do you think it is the opaque and triumphant Church that makes us contemplate the Crucified One, or the transparent and poor one?
