Our Lord’s Last Prayer
Too Often Forgotten From the 17th Chapter of the Gospel of St. John, beginning at the 1st Verse:The High Priestly Prayer: The climax of Jesus’ farewell discourse is his intercessory prayer for his followers, starting with the faithful disciples but extending beyond them to all believers throughout history. The literary genre is the “dramatic monologue,” in which we overhear a speaker addressing a listener, and in this case it is specifically a prayer addressed by the Son to the Father. Specific topics unfold as follows: prayer that Jesus would be glorified (vv. 1-5), prayer for the disciples (vv. 6-19), prayer for the followers of Christ throughout history (vv. 20-26).
Two good questions around which to organize a study of the passage are these: What does Jesus desire for his followers? How should followers of Jesus live in light of his prayer for them? The prayer can also be explored for what it says about the following themes: the nature of the relationship between the Son and Father; truth; the relationship of believers to each other and the world.
"When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come: glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorify you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know the truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, that you have given me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Then the 18th chapter leads us into the first events of the Passion.
(Note: The text and information about this quote from scripture is from The Literary Study Bible, English Standard Version, general editors Leland Ryken and Philip Graham Ryken, The Rev. J.I. Packer editor of the ESV translation, Crossway Bibles, Wheaton, Illinois, A.D. 2007.)
In Christ's love,
Fr. Robert Pax
