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May 16 The Gospel breski1 Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 17,11b-19. Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed, saying: "Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given …More
May 16 The Gospel breski1

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 17,11b-19.
Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed, saying: "Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are.
When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled.
But now I am coming to you. I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely.
I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.
I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one.
They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.
Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.
And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth."

Copyright © Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, USCCB

Saint Gregory of Nyssa (c.335-395)
monk and Bishop
Sermon on the Song of Songs, no.15 ; PG 44, 1116 (trans. cf. breviary, 7th. Sunday of Easter)


"Holy Father, keep them in your name (…) so that they may be one as we are one"
The Beloved in the Song of Songs says: “My dove, my perfect one, is only one. She is the only child of her mother (…)” (6:9). The same point is made even more clearly by the Lord's own words in the Gospel. For when in his blessing he bequeathed all power to his disciples, in his prayer to his Father he bestowed on his followers all good gifts, and he added the greatest gift of all, that they should never be fragmented or divided (…), but they should all be one, united in growth with the one and only good. And so, through “the unity of the Holy Spirit”, they should all be clasped together in “the bond of peace,” and become “one body, one spirit, through the one hope to which they are called” (Eph 4:3-4) (…)
“That they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one.” The bond of this unity is glory, and that the Holy Spirit is called “glory” no sensible person will deny if he considers the Lord’s words: “The glory which you have given me, I have given them” (Jn 17:22). He truly gave such glory to his disciples, for he said to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit” (Jn 20:22). When he clothed himself in human nature, Christ received this glory, which he had from all ages, “before the world began” (Jn 17:5); and when his human nature was thus glorified by the Holy Spirit, the glory of the Spirit could be handed on to Christ's kin, beginning with the disciples. This is the meaning of Christ's words: “Father, the glory which you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one as we are one.”