GOSPEL REFLECTION, WEDNESDAY, 7TH WEEK OF EASTER, 20 MAY 2026

John 17:11b-19.  At the Last Supper, Jesus prays what we know as his “High-Priestly Prayer;”  John records it in Ch 17 Of John’s gospel.  In the portion we have before us as today’s gospel reading, Jesus prays for his disciples as the One who always prays for them, and who is the mediator between them and God.  Disciples have come to know God through him, and in turn he prays that they may be set apart from the world to be protected and made safe in their relation to the Father.  ‘Being set apart’ is what the Greek term for their ‘consecration and sanctification’ means.  The disciples are not taken OUT of the ‘world,’ by which the gospel means ‘society organised without God,’ a good description of what we experience as secular society.  We are ‘set apart’ in this sense: to be given a mission to show the world who God is and what it means to be a follower of Christ.  To do that effectively, Jesus prays to the Father for our ‘unity.’  By that, Jesus means that just as he is one with the Father, so we may be one in Christ.  It is a spiritual unity, a unity not fabricated by people (we are so clumsy and ineffective at that), but a unity that is nothing less than a celebration and showing forth of the Oneness of God, made real as a profound unity brought by the Holy Spirit.  The ‘world’ may hate Christians for this, may try to tempt, humiliate, and disunify us, but Christ warns us of this in his High-Priestly Prayer.  Christ earnestly prays for our unity ‘so that they my have my joy made complete in themselves!’(v. 13).