Jesus prayed, saying: “Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”
Earlier in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says that those who believe in him will become one with the Father and that Jesus gives them the glory that the Father gave him. The exact words are “And I have given them the glory you gave me.”
This suggests a spiritual reality which seems like it shouldn’t be. How can Jesus give me glory? Isn’t it the opposite, that I give glory to him? God, help me understand this completely without thinking I understand it right off the bat. The reason Jesus gives us the glory the Father gave him is so that we may be one with the Father as Jesus and the Father are one and because the Father loves us even as he loved Jesus.
My Jesus, mercy! I close my eyes and distractions crowd around me. Stay with me today so that I might have the hope and the courage to be one with you. And you love others; let me remember you pray that they also may be in you and the Father.
Jesus says of the Father: “You loved me before the foundation of the world.” And Jesus wants us to be brought to perfection as one with the Father just as he is one with the Father. Let me think about that today; that the Father has loved me also from before the foundation of the world. Through the Eucharist, through God’s love incarnate, every time I receive it, I become one with God through his Son, one with the Father from before I was brought into the world. It is for this that Jesus prays, “that the world may believe [the Father] sent me.”