Dear Friends,
In today’s gospel we hear a section of Jesus’ prayer for his disciples that he prayed the evening of the Last Supper. In that prayer, he also prays for us. Part of his prayer may be a bit difficult to understand. Listen to what Jesus prays, “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.”
What does that mean, to consecrate? To consecrate something or someone means to give that thing or person to God as God’s property, to take it out of the context of what is ours so that it no longer belongs to our affairs, but is totally of God. Consecration is thus a taking away from the world and a giving over to the living God. The thing or person no longer belongs to us, or even to itself, but is immersed in God.
Such a giving up of something in order to give it over to God is also called a “sacrifice”. This thing will no longer be my property, but God’s property. In the Old Testament, the giving over of a person to God, his “sanctification”, is identified with those called to be prophets, priests, and kings. It is a transfer of ownership, a being taken out of the world and given to God. You hear the same idea in the prayers of the baptism ritual.
When Jesus prays for you and me, “Consecrate them in the truth”, he is including you, me and all the Apostles in his priesthood, the institution of his new priesthood for the community of the faithful of all times. He prays that God take us away from ourselves to make us God’s own property, so that, starting from him, all the faithful can carry out the priestly ministry for the world. The disciples are drawn within God by being immersed in the word of God. The word of God is the bath which purifies them, the power which transforms them into God’s own being.
So then, how do things stand in our lives? Are we truly washed by the word of God? Do we really know that word? Do we love it? Are we engaged with this word to the point that it leaves a mark on our lives and shapes our thinking? Or, instead is our thinking being constantly shaped by all the things that others say and do? Aren’t prevailing opinions the criterion by which we too often measure ourselves? Are we not perhaps, when all is said and done, stuck in the superficiality of our culture today? Do we let social media and the commentators of the world shape our “truth”?
Did not Jesus say of himself: “I am the truth”? Is Jesus not the living Word of God, to which every other word refers? Sanctify them in the truth means, then, to be united with Jesus. Indeed, when all is said and done, there is only one priest, Jesus Christ himself. Consequently, the priesthood of the disciples is actually a participation in the priesthood of Jesus.
When we talk about being sanctified in the truth, we need to remember that in Jesus truth and love are one. Being immersed in Jesus means being immersed in his goodness, in love. True love does not come cheap, it can be quite costly. It resists evil in order to bring true goodness. If we become one with Christ, we learn to recognize him precisely in the suffering, in the poor, in the little ones of this world. If we become one with Christ, then we become people who serve, who recognize in others our brothers and sisters, and in them, we encounter Jesus.
Peace,
Fr. Damian