In his final words at the Last Supper, Jesus prays for his disciples. It is a very long personal prayer (26 verses in John’s Gospel.)
Jesus asks God to protect his disciples from the “Evil One.” This comes as no surprise. In Matthew’s version of the Our Father, Jesus says: “Do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the Evil One.”
Earlier in his Last Discourse, Jesus spoke about his own face-off with the Evil One: “I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of the world is coming.” (14:30)
We believe that the world has a future, and that we are called to help bring the world to its destiny as the Reign of God. Yet, the accomplishment of this great task might take eons. In this time between the first coming of Christ and the coming of Christ at the end of time, “the world” is a mixture of the good news of the Gospel and the bad news of the Evil One. Which means that, as much as I hate to say it, some of what surrounds me is opposed to the Gospel.
A mistrust of “the world” is not the whole story. But full acceptance of the world is not the whole story either.
Jesus prays for me, that I will know the difference.
In the next post, Jesus is praying to the Father and, looking ahead to all disciples of future ages. He says: “That they also may be one in us.”
The Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, had a sense of this when he wrote
“Life is very simple: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent to God, and God is shining through it all the time. This is not a fable or a nice story. It is true. God manifests himself everywhere in every thing, in people, in things and in nature and in events. You cannot be without God. It’s impossible. Simply impossible.”