Father, the Hour has come: glorify your Son.
In the days between the Ascension and Pentecost, the Church offers for our meditation the 17th Chapter of St. John’s Gospel. The choice is a happy one, for the great Priestly Prayer of Jesus is especially well suited for these days. In the light of the mystery of the Ascension, this prayer points towards our heavenly destiny, and unveils something of its meaning and content. And as we pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we understand something of how the Prayer of Jesus can be fulfilled on earth as it is in heaven.
Father, glorify your Son. The words of Jesus to his Father here are spoken not for his own sake, but for ours. Jesus prays that we might enter into the bond of communion and love that perpetually unites him with his Father. The glorification of the Son which Jesus speaks of has two points of reference. In the first place he means: may I complete my work by being lifted up on the Cross. When I am on the Cross may the love I have for you and for all mankind be finally and definitively manifested. From the Cross may my universal invitation to faith, to life, to union with you, Father, be radiantly visible, for all ages to come. May I be glorified by efficaciously drawing all men to myself through the Cross.
In the second place, the glorification of the Son refers to the ascension of Jesus to his Father’s right hand, after his resurrection from the dead. This is not to be for him a new glory, but the same glory that as eternal Son he had before ever the world existed (v. 5). Jesus has no need to ask for this, since it is his by right, and he cannot lose it. Similarly as Son he can never cease to glorify his Father. But Jesus is asking that, through our union with him, through our belonging to him, we may be caught up into that glory. He is asking that we may participate in the Father’s eternal glorification of his Son, and in the Son’s eternal glorification of his Father.
To do that for us is Heaven: our supreme dignity, our final happiness, our glory. Of course it must be utterly beyond our natural powers, or our deserving. It’s made possible only through the Incarnation, and then through the death of Jesus, and through his resurrection from the dead.
Father, glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you. The Son will glorify his Father on the Cross, by offering him his final obedience and love to the end. He will glorify his Father, both on the Cross and in heaven also, by acting there as our High Priest: by interceding for us; by bringing us to life. Neither the Father nor the Son need anything whatever from us. We can add nothing to their glory. Yet for us to enter into eternal life is to give worthy, effective, acceptable glory to both the Father and the Son: for that is the fulfilment of the divine work, or Plan, or economy; that is the fruitful reception of the gift that is given. This provides for us an unanswerable motivation for coming to heaven, to life, to God: that we may spend our eternity loving, praising and thanking him. What a paradox it is that the best - no - the only way to give the glory that is due to God, to Jesus, is to receive the gift that is offered to us!
In the first place the name of that Gift is the Holy Spirit. In Himself He is the glory of the Father and the Son; or the glory that Father and Son give to one another. The Holy Spirit dwelling within us will also Himself be our glory. By the Holy Spirit even now we share the divine life. By Him we will enter that life definitively in heaven.
Eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (v. 3). According to Isaiah Chapter 11, knowledge is one of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. We could say more: surely the Father knows the Son, and the Son knows the Father, in the Holy Spirit. So insofar as we receive the Holy Spirit, we thereby receive, according to our measure, God’s own knowledge of Himself. With that we receive God’s own life: eternal life.
In St. John’s Gospel Jesus often speaks of his own knowledge of his Father. He tells the Jews, I know him, and if I were to say I do not know him I should be a liar (8:55). And he tells his disciples: If you know me, you will know my Father also (14:7). At the end of his first letter St. John sums up his doctrine: The Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know the One who is true. ... He is the true God, and this is eternal life (1 Jn 5:20).
In different language, St. Paul has the same doctrine. He speaks of heaven to the Corinthians: Then I shall know, even as I am fully known myself (1 Cor 13:12). He prays for the Ephesians: May God bring you to full knowledge of himself (1:17). And he tells Timothy: I know the one in whom I have put my trust (2 Tm 1:12). Let me not omit to mention here also words of Jesus recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke: No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son choses to reveal him (Mt 11:27, Lk 10:22).
To know God; to glorify God; to enter God’s own glory; to receive eternal life, divine life; to participate in the mutual love of the Trinitarian Persons: this is the meaning of Heaven. It’s also the meaning of the Christian life on earth. Through faith, hope and charity, that should be already, for all the baptised, a real anticipation of heaven. This is the meaning of the Church’s liturgy, and supremely of the Mass. And without doubt it’s the meaning also of our monastic life! We are here to glorify the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. Father! we cry. Hallowed by thy name! We are here also to receive the Holy Spirit, to pray for the Holy Spirit, to invoke the Holy Spirit upon the Church and the world. Then in the depths of our prayer, in silence and hiddenness, we give God glory, and receive his glory. We give him our love, and we know ourselves loved by him. We open ourselves to be known by him, and we know him. May the Holy Spirit effect all this in us, and more, according to his will: that in all things God might be glorified (1 Pt 4:11; HR 57:9).