LAST SUPPER DISCOURSE PRAYER OF JESUS
SCRIPTURE JOHN 17:1-8
When Jesus had said this, he raised his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that he may give eternal life to all you gave him. Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began. “I revealed your name* to those whom you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you gave me is from you, because the words you gave to me I have given to them, and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.
REFLECTION
Knowing Jesus and the one who sent Him is eternal life! “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known.”1 COR. 13:12
Knowing Jesus is heaven on earth. Why wait, let’s get started! To know Him is to Love Him!
SCRIPTURE JOHN 17:9-17
I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, (Father), because they are yours,and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you. 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.
REFLECTION
We do not belong to this world but to the one above! We live in this world of toil and calamity, pressed by worldly desires but Jesus is victorious over this world of sin and death. Often, Jesus would tell His flock,
Do not be afraid! He was not telling us to be reckless but rather trust in him; faith and fear cannot coexist, For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control. 2 Timothy 1:7
Fear not, little sheep, the Good Shepherd hovers over us!
SCRIPTURE JOHN 17-18-26
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. “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.
FATHER AS YOU SENT ME I SEND THEM
Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me. I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.”
REFLECTION
We are sent into the world to magnify the Lord as Jesus did! We go out in union with Jesus. His face shines upon us and those we meet. Not only. are we invited to share in His Passion but we are invited to share in His glory and share that glory with others. What a mission if we choose to accept!
See, I have today set before you life, and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I am giving you today, loving the LORD, your God, and walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes and ordinances, you will live and grow numerous, and the LORD, your God, will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. DEUTERONOMY 30:15-16
CHOOSE LIFE!