Patrick Comerford
Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (20 April 2025) and continuing through Ascension Day until the Day of Pentecost or Whit Sunday next Sunday (8 June 2025). This week began with the Seventh Sunday of Easter (Easter VII), and today the calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship recalls Saint Boniface (Wynfrith) of Crediton (754), Bishop, Apostle of Germany, Martyr.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
John 17: 20-26 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 20 ‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 24 Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
25 ‘Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’
Today’s Reflection:
As I was saying in my reflections on Sunday, we are, in some ways, caught in the church calendar in an in-between time, between Ascension Day last Thursday [29 May 2025], and the Day of Pentecost on Sunday next [8 June 2025].
The Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (John 17: 20-26) follows Christ’s ‘Farewell Discourse’ at the Last Supper (John 14: 1 to 16: 33), and Christ has just ended his instructions to his disciples, which conclude with the advice, ‘In the world you face persecution But take courage; I have conquered the world!’ (John 16: 33).
We are now coming to the end of his prayer to the Father (John 17: 1-26), in which he summarises the significance of his life as the time for his glory – his Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension – has arrived.
This prayer is often referred to as the High Priestly Prayer, as it includes many of the elements of prayer a priest offers when a sacrifice is about to be made: glorification (verses 3-5, 25), remembrance of God’s work (verses 2, 6-8, 22, 23), intercession on behalf of others (verses 9, 11, 15, 20, 21, 24), and a declaration of the offering itself (verses 1, 5).
In the Orthodox Church, this passage is also read on the Seventh Sunday of Easter (1 June 2025), a day remembering the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in the year 325. We are celebrating the 1,700th anniversary of that council this year and its formulation of the Nicene Creed. That council condemned the heresy of Arianism that taught that the Son of God was created by the Father and that there was a time when the Son of God did not exist. Christ’s words here bear witness to his divinity and to his filial relationship with the Father.
In his time alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ looks up to heaven and prays to the Father, asking him ‘that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe.’ (verse 21).
In this reading, Christ prays for the Church of all times. He looks beyond those who follow him now, to those who will come to believe through their witness. May the Church be rooted in the oneness he shares with the Father (verse 21), which is a relationship of mutual love (verse 23).
He prays that his followers may attain the ultimate goal: to share in Christ’s glory, which is founded in love that has been there before time began (verse 24).
His followers know that Christ has been sent by the Father (verse 25). Now he prays that as we are sent out into the world that ‘the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’
Meanwhile, our reading tomorrow returns to the post-Resurrection appearances.
Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Today’s Prayers (Thursday 5 June 2025):
The new edition of Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), covers the period from 1 July to 20 November 2025. The theme in the prayer diary this week (1-7 June) is ‘Volunteers’ Week’ and was introduced on Sunday by Carol Miller, Church Engagement Manager, USPG.
The USPG prayer diary invites us to pray today (Thursday 5 June 2025):
Father, we ask for your resources for communities where children struggle in school because of poverty or lack of resources. May you bring provision.
The Collect:
God our redeemer,
who called your servant Boniface
to preach the gospel among the German people
and to build up your Church in holiness:
grant that we may preserve in our hearts
that faith which he taught with his words
and sealed with his blood,
and profess it in lives dedicated to your Son
Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Post Communion Prayer:
God our redeemer,
whose Church was strengthened by the blood of your martyr Boniface:
so bind us, in life and death, to Christ’s sacrifice
that our lives, broken and offered with his,
may carry his death and proclaim his resurrection in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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