June 9 - John 17:1-13 - eternal life is to know God

IN those days, Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son so that the Son may glorify You, since You have given Him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent. I glorified You on earth by finishing the work that You gave Me to do. So now, Father, glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory that I had in Your presence before the world existed. I have made Your Name known to those whom You gave me from the world. They were Yours, and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they know that everything You have given Me is from You. The words that You gave to Me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from You. And they have believed that You sent Me. I am asking on their behalf, I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom You gave Me, because they are Yours. All Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, protect them in Your Name that You have given Me, so that they may be one, as We are one. While I was with them, I protected them in Your Name that You have given Me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the the son of destruction (that is, Judas Iscariot), so that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to You, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have My joy made complete in themselves.

Christ is risen!

A really interesting (it's not like there is anything uninteresting in the Gospel) Gospel lesson we have for this Sunday. It is a prayer of Jesus to God, or to God the Father to be exact.

This prayer that Christ offers is often called the High Priestly Prayer because it contains the basic elements of prayer a priest in the Old Testament would offer to God when a sacrifice is about to be made:
​Glorification - "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent. I glorified You on earth by finishing the work that You gave Me to do. So now, Father, glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory that I had in Your presence before the world existed."
​Remembrance of God's works - "...since You have given Him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom You have given Him." & "I have made Your Name known to those whom You gave me from the world. They were Yours, and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they know that everything You have given Me is from You. The words that You gave to Me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from You. And they have believed that You sent Me."
​Intercession of behalf of others - "I am asking on their behalf, I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom You gave Me, because they are Yours." & "And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, protect them in Your Name that You have given Me, so that they may be one, as We are one."
​And a declaration of the offering itself - “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son so that the Son may glorify You." & "So now, Father, glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory that I had in Your presence before the world existed."

Notice that the Lord says, "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent." The eternal life is knowledge of God, that He is only and true, and that God the Father sent His Son for our salvation. 

​Simple, right? Know God. What is there not to know? God is God - supreme, almighty, everywhere-present, listens to our prayers and does exactly as we ask Him to do. I wish I was joking, but very often our construction of God is exactly that - a vending machine of our wishes, or at least we hope He would be. This is partly due to our consumeristic culture - we provide the demand, market spits out supply, all are happy. 

Thankfully this is not the case with God. To know God means to live in Him, according to His commands, to live with Him in His Church. It may sound a bit harsh, but it is impossible to know God outside of His Church. And I don't mean just the church you go to, like your parish, but the Universal Church (to which every Orthodox parish belongs).

Christians were meant to live together, as a community - one big Community made up of a bunch of small local communities. Our faith is personal, but it is lived communally.

And one final note from me. Christ ends our Sunday's lesson with, "I speak these things in the world so that they may have My joy made complete in themselves." Jesus said this prayer and gave a lot of His teachings, both recorded in the Gospels and unrecorded but preserved in the Church, aloud. Everything He said was meant for us to have His joy made complete. 

​How or what is the joy of God? We don't know and we can't know in this world, there is simply too much corruption and lust and decay. We do get some taste of this joy communally. I mentioned the other Sunday in a sermon that we get a slight foretaste of the Kingdom of God when we worship together, when we share things together (for example, sharing the Gospel of Christ), when we learn to love each other.

Why? Because that's exactly what we will be doing in the Kingdom of God in the eternal life - worship One True God, share in His grace, and remain in love. If we can't do these things in this temporary life, how can we expect to do them for all eternity.

Of course we could remain ignorant and say that there is no such thing as the Kingdom of heaven or eternal life. In which case, this life, as temporary as it is, make no sense. And Christians simply refuse to believe that this earthly life is all that there is to our existence.

(Sorry for ending on a sour note. Most of the times I do not know where my thoughts will take me when writing these reflections).

Yours in the risen Lord,
​Father Aleksey