Friday, May 2, 2008

Today’s text

John 17:7-11

Now at last they have recognized that all you have given me comes from you for I have given them the teaching you gave to me, and they have indeed accepted it and know for certain that I came from you, and have believed that it was you who sent me. It is for them that I pray. I am not praying for the world but for those you have given me, because they belong to you. All I have is yours and all you have is mine, and in them I am glorified. I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name, so that they may be one like us.

Prayer

Like us … . Two small words spark joy and tears for which I am thankful. They tell me my soul is neither dead nor dull but still able to taste your goodness.

You pray, Jesus, that we be one like you and the Blessed Mystery are one, sharing all that you are so that to see the one is to know the other. And in this case, the Totally Other, the face of God.

You are glorified in us, Jesus, as we hold you fast, abiding in your love and loving to the end of our souls, the end of our abilities, the end of our days. In the loving, we taste and know the goodness of all you share with the Holy One.

It is a feast we shall know when our breath here stops--and now, in the sweetness of sharing, made sweeter by the endings which rush at us: the end of lives, the end of school, the departure of friends and treasured colleagues, the great exodus that takes our souls down the roads you appoint for us.

As we prepare to go, be glorified in us, my brother.

Be glorified in the love you pry out of your hearts to share with those with whom we have been privileged to share our lives. Be glorified in us as we leave to find fresh connections with faces far off for whom you also pray.

Be glorified that we may taste what it is to be like you, one with the Blessed Mystery whose love never departs, even when we must.

Pr. David L. Miller