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Gospel Reading for May 15, 2024 – John 17: 11b-19
WORLDLY
Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed, saying: “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one. 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. 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.”
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“ . . . 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.”
To be a true Christian is to not belong to the world, but to live in the world as Jesus did. The word “WORLDLY” means we are more concerned with material values rather than spiritual existence. It would be absurd to be WORLDLY because we cannot stay in the world forever, but we can live forever as spirits. When we leave this world, what will count is how we have lived in it and not how we have become a part of it. It is the Evil One who has made his abode in our world, so we have to be discerning enough to know if the life we live gravitates towards God or the Evil One.
1 Peter 5: 8-10 is truly very encouraging: “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.”
Lord God, the source of all grace, we ask you to help us be spared from the clutches of the Evil One because it is you we wish to live with in eternity!
