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Today, John, the beloved apostle, introduces us into the very prayer of Jesus.
“Grant me, Holy Spirit, to hear him with my ears, to listen to him with my heart, so that I may marvel at what is the object of his prayer. Amen. »
Since some decades ago, we have been living in a world where good has become evil, the values we cherished and put into practice in our lives have become impossible to adopt and to live. Even the sacred Word of God, the Holy Bible, is being questioned and challenged. And we often hear people say: "Our world is hard; our world is crazy"; And it is quite true that the problems linked to the power of science over life, to the survival of man in his natural environment, to the changes in society and to economic crises, have taken on a planetary dimension in recent decades, and that men, even when they agree to work together, are finding it increasingly difficult to control the acceleration of all these phenomena.
Yet it is in this world that Christ wants us, as witnesses of his message, this world where man works wonders and takes the measure of his poverty: "I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to preserve them from the devil; […] Consecrate them."
In the heart of this modern world that God loves but which is worked by the forces of refusal, revolt and atheism, the Father will therefore keep us, sanctify us and consecrate us, in response to Jesus' prayer.
Our heavenly Father guards us, not by making us strangers to our world, not by isolating us as in a bubble where we breathe only the air of faith and hope, but by strengthening us inwardly, through his Spirit, against the lies of the spirit of evil, against the contagion of the mind and the heart, against our own sorrows and discouragements.
God our Father keeps us, and sanctifies us; He "consecrates" us, that is, he sets us apart for himself and makes us enter from now on into his life, into his project, into his light, which we never see with the eyes of the body but which is in us certainty for the intellect and joy for the heart.
To sanctify us in this way, to draw closer every day to his intimacy, God, as true Father, offers us a privileged path: his word transmitted by Jesus, the Messenger, and his truth contained entirely in Jesus, who is his message and his mouth.
This is how Jesus can ask his Father for us: "Consecrate them with the truth: your word is truth"; as if he were saying: "Make them pass through you, by your truth that I bring to them. May my word, received in faith, establish them in communion with you! The only truth that is worthy of being served more than anything else is God's plan for man and the world, as revealed to us in Jesus Christ; the truth that the world thirsts for is that God wants to reconcile everything in his Son and that this promise of peace and unity passes through Jesus' Passover.
It is from this certainty, in fact, that we truly live, it is from this certainty that we draw light and joy, we who take on so many tasks to serve God in our brothers and sisters. This friendship of God, this life of the Father into which Jesus introduces us, is ultimately truer, more intense and more necessary than all our projects, all our quests and all our thirsts. The more we trust in the Father, the more we succeed in making his will our food. The Spirit whom we pray comes to tell us with strength and gentleness that God who keeps and sanctifies us in this world, is the great business of our hearts, the great urgency of life, for ourselves and those we love.
It is therefore a question for those who have truly encountered the Son of God to place partial and disappointing truths in their proper place, and to live resolutely in the account of the Kingdom. Beyond the so-called serenity, the conquests of self-love, the different aspects of selfishness, there is a need to rediscover the commitment of our baptism. There is a need to place our existence in the truth of God, and to set ourselves back on the journey with the haste of travellers, with the joy of those who have found the treasure and the pearl.
The first sign we give to God of this profound harmony with his plan is our fraternal union. Every community ambition, every desire for influence, and even every project of witness must give way to the goal set by Jesus himself, and which will always keep the priority: to achieve perfect unity. Consecrated by the same truth, dedicated together to Jesus-Truth, the disciples will be one as the Father and the Son are one.
Then our life, even in silence, will become a word for the world. "So," says Jesus, "the world will believe that you have sent me." Yes, the world, in its hours of anguish or despair, will be able to believe that salvation has come and that it remains offered forever. The world will know that God loved us with an unimaginable love, and that he still loves us as he loved his own Son.
Each of our days will become a new hymn to the God who consecrates and sends. Our long journey, personal and communal, in enthusiasm as well as through monotony, insecurity or suffering, will be illuminated by a certainty, the very one certainty that Jesus came to bring to the world: God wants to take us into his glory.
The road will always climb up: we knew this when we chose it; but already, on the mountain, Jesus, the light of the world is guiding us.. So be of good faith and stand firm in this faith in Jesus Christ. "Blessed is the man who stands firm in the face of temptation, for after he has proved himself, he will receive the crown of the victor: the life that God has promised to those who love him."
The Most Rev James Wong
Retired Primate of the Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean
