Homily, Wednesday 8 June 2011

John 17:11-19

We are getting near to the end of the long Last Supper scene in John’s Gospel.  We have had three chapters of profound teaching about the need to abide in Jesus as he abides in the Father, teaching about the gift of the Holy Spirit who will abide in our hearts.

And now at the end Jesus prays for his disciples, not only those in the upper room but all his disciples throughout time, the church in every age, which includes us.

This is called the “priestly prayer of Christ”: Jesus prays as the High Priest whom God has consecrated and sent into the world, and it is a prayer of consecration.  Jesus consecrates himself, as both priest and sacrificial victim. He is the one who reveals God as priest, and who does so in the midst of the world’s violence and envy, as victim. And this is the expression of the mission Jesus has received from the Father, which is to make the Father known.

But Jesus also consecrates his disciples, his disciples in every age. Through that consecration Jesus shares his priesthood and his mission with the Church. The Church is to be the visible sign of that mission in the world until the end of time, the Church, like Jesus, is to make the Father known.

By the consecration which Jesus imparts to the Church we are sanctified, set apart for the work of God, and made into a holy priesthood. The gift of the Holy Spirit in our hearts through baptism stamps that mark and character on us for ever. We are to be God’s holy people to make the world holy.

The gift of the Holy Spirit also is the gift of unity. Jesus prays that his disciples may be one in the same way as he and the Father are one. This unity is the discovery that our true life, our identity and our very being, are found in God. And this is what the mission of Christ in the world is about, the mission we now share: to make God known, to make known to the world that its true life is found in God and not elsewhere.

The world is caught in the grip of a destructive illusion that life is something we create for ourselves. The autonomous ego, the self-made person, promise life where life cannot be found. The gift of God is true life, life in the Holy Spirit which is the life of God himself.

And we are sent as Christ was, set in this world although we are not of the world because our true life is found in God. Our mission is to make God known, to bring others into that true life which is God’s gift.

Christ’s priestly prayer of consecration is a prayer for his Church for all time. That act of consecration is made real and present for us in every Eucharist. Here Christ himself, through the ministry of the priests he has called and sent, makes himself present, the consecrated priest and victim.  Ordinary stuff, bread and wine, is changed by the power of that consecration into his body and blood. Ordinary people, you and me, are changed into Christ’s body, his Church, the holy priesthood he has consecrated and sent into the world.

Here we discover again the true source of our life, the Holy Spirit who is the Father’s gift, the Spirit who makes us one in Jesus and in the Father. Here we are consecrated and sent, God’s holy people to make the world holy, to make known God’s name.