Seventh Sunday after Pascha. Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea; The Holy Great Rulers Constantine (337) and Helen (330), Equals-to-the-Apostles.
Polyeleos Feast.
Acts 20:16-18, 28-36; Acts 26:1-5, 12-20; John 17:1-13; John 10:1-8.
Read John 17:1-13
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
If anyone’s prayers are going to be answered, Jesus’s will be. W.B. Yeats famously wrote, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” Against this, Jesus prays.
John 17 is much loved for Jesus’s prayer that “those who believe in me through their word…may all be one,” but in today’s gospel reading He is praying for the Apostles: “I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world…I am praying for them…Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” Christ accomplishes Christian unity through Apostolic unity: “For I have given them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from thee; and they have believed that thou didst send me.”
Notice the concentric circles Jesus works outwardly from in building an enduring world for the ages:
Christ is the center: “Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made.”
The Apostles, “those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one,” are gathered around Him.
And we, “those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one,” gather around the Apostles, “so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me,” and gather around Christ.
We regularly want to know what we should do. We may sometimes even wish to that end that we could see the future. Here is the future. We connect with it by connecting with Christ through the teaching of the Apostles; we participate with Christ in building it by connecting in unity with each other and reaching out to the world.