Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter. John 17:1–11a. “The words you gave to me I have given to them … everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine…”
This is the opening of what is usually called Jesus’ “high priestly prayer.” It happens shortly before his arrest, and he is concerned about the welfare of his followers. The prayer begins by acknowledging the Source of all things.
Jesus knows that he is about to undergo one of the grizzliest deaths humans have inflicted upon one another: crucifixion. He reflects on his three years of teaching and affirms, “the words you gave to me I have given to them.” He shared what he had received from his heavenly Father. He did not hoard them.
John 1:1 asserts that Jesus is “the Word” or the Logos. He is the personification of the guiding principle of all things. As “the Word,” he disseminates “the words” to his disciples; he subsequently expected those disciples go everywhere and “teach them to observe everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20).
He further recognizes a humbling truth. “everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine.” Jesus was not a loner. Everything he had, did, and was had an intimate connection to God. This is the God who Meister Eckhart would describe as the God beyond God.
The early Christian theologians like Gregory of Nyssa and St. Basil the Great looked at this prayer and saw evidence of the hypostatic union of Father and Son. They share the same essence, as the creed says, “God from God, light from Light, True God from True God begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.”
Sharing the very essence of Father, Jesus did not selfishly hold on to his divine essence. “Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7–8).
Yet his death was not his end. In his resurrection and ascension, “God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above all other names” (Philippians 2:9).
St Paul goes on to echo the high priestly prayer of Jesus, “so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should proclaim to the glory of God the Father: Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10–11)
I’m left asking myself if I can humbly receive those words coming from the Word. What would it mean for me to empty myself as Jesus did and take up my cross? Can I say to God, “Everything of mine is yours,” or am I clinging to what I believe is mine?
It is only in the honest recognition that “everything of mine is yours” that we experience the truth of “everything of yours is mine.” This is the heart of the theosis (or divinization) as St. Athanasius described in On the Incarnation, “becoming by grace what God is by nature.”
The Prayer of St. Francis puts is eloquently, “For it is in giving that we receive. It is pardoning that we are pardoned. And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
For Jesus, nothing makes us more God-like than generosity. That truth is at the heart of his famous teaching in Matthew 25. Do acts of mercy unto the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters is doing unto Christ himself (Matthew 25:40). Jesus personally identifies with “the least.” The act of giving to “the least” is nothing less than giving to God, and when you give to God, you receive a priceless return. “When you give to the poor, it is like lending to the Lord, and the Lord will pay you back” (Proverbs 19:17).
Back to today’s Gospel in John 17. Everything Jesus shares with the Father, he shares. By giving generously, not just of our money but of ourselves, we open ourselves to receiving and experiencing the communion of theosis.
