John proclaims the Divine presence of God in Jesus in his very first Gospel with the words: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God… And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And now, as he announces the end of his physical presence as the incarnation of the Father on earth, Jesus passes the baton to us. How beautiful it is to hear Jesus pray for his apostles, not alone in a garden or in the desert but in their very midst. It really is nothing short of astonishing to imagine this gospel as a beautiful model for us. In this Gospel of John (John17: 11-19) there is no request for Jesus to “teach us how to pray,” but rather a beautiful prayer for the protection of those Jesus loved as he was preparing to physically leave this world. This is the Lord’s Prayer according to John.
Holy Father, 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.
Here John relies on mystical words that speak to us in a place in which personal images of reality and life itself reside. John invites us to picture what being in a relationship with God really means. Note, I did not say “understand,” but rather, I used the word “picture” in an effort to prompt our imaginations and all our senses to feel the words as a palpable experience, and know what being in a relationship with God actually feels like, tastes like, and smells like. It’s at the essence of what we know when we say “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God shared our humanity fully through Jesus as we through Jesus, share fully in God’s divinity. Anything less than this relationship would be considered to be a just a mere “acquaintance” of God.
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