Jn 17:11b-19
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 one destined to be lost, 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. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.
Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Words and Worlds
“The Word.” The Word of God. It can be literal, or it can refer to Scripture as a whole, the “Word” of God. Finally, in Scripture, it refers to Jesus Christ, who is “the Word made flesh”, both God and man. Paul and the early Christians constantly, even with tears, worked to discern and spread the true message of Jesus (the Word), amidst wolves, fake news, and apparently those with a tendency to favor the rich. That was, and is as we read in John’s Gospel, the way of the world. How are we to discern God’s word in the daily bombardment of noise and activity?
St. Ignatius of Loyola reminds us that, when we strive to listen to God’s word speaking to us, we will feel a peace, a consolation, as we draw closer to God. Even while living enthusiastically in the world, we can take a few moments to pull away and focus on God’s presence within us, as well as in the world around us.
Where do I taste God’s presence in the world today?
—Donna K. Becher, M.S. is an associate spiritual director at the West Virginia Institute for Spirituality, Charleston, West Virginia. Her training is rooted in the Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
Prayer
Today, Father, this blue sky lauds you. The delicate green and orange flowers of the tulip poplar tree praise you. The distant blue hills praise you together with the sweet-smelling air that is full of brilliant light. The bickering flycatchers praise you together with the lowing cattle and the quails that whistle over there. I too, Father, praise you, with all these my brothers, and they all give voice to my own heart and to my own silence. We are all one silence and a diversity of voices…..Therefore Father, I beg you to keep me in this silence so that I may learn from it the word of your peace and the word of your mercy and the word of your gentleness to the world: and that through me perhaps your word of peace may make itself heard where it has not been possible for anyone to hear it for a long time.
—Thomas Merton, excerpted from “Vigil of Pentecost”