7e Easter Sunday - C - 1 June 2025
Dear brothers and sisters, we have just heard the conclusion of Jesus' prayer at the end of his last meal with his disciples. In the Gospel according to Saint John, immediately after this prayer begins the account of his passion that we hear read on Good Friday: "When Jesus had said this, he went out with his disciples and crossed the brook Kidron; there was a garden there, into which he entered with his disciples". We could say that this prayer is like Jesus' testament, the most precious thing he leaves us for our lives. What he leaves not only to the apostles - "those who are there" - but also to us - "those who, thanks to their word, have believed in him".
Before this prayer, during this meal, after having washed his disciples' feet, Jesus had said to them: "If I have washed your feet, you too must wash one another's feet". And in his long conversation with them, he said: "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another. As I have loved you, you also must love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
And now, in his prayer, addressing the Father, he takes up again in some way what he had said to his disciples: to wash one another's feet and to love one another, in which way all will recognise that we are his disciples becomes a prayer: "That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be one in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me.
He had also said to them: "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
And in his prayer he said: "I have given them the glory that you have given me, so that they may be one, just as we are one: I in them and you in me. So that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. He was telling us how we should live. And in his prayer he asked the Father to do this for us. As the celebration of these fifty days of Easter draws to a close, we have here what we must live and the assurance that we can live it, not by our own strength but by the prayer of Jesus for us who have believed.
In the prayer that opened this liturgy, we asked: "Lord, be favourable to our petitions: we believe that the Saviour of mankind is with you in glory; may we experience that he remains with us until the end of the world, as he himself promised".
Then, being able to prove that he dwells with us, we will wash one another's feet, we will love one another, in this all will know that we are his disciples, and the love with which the Father loved the Son will be in us and he in us.
Brother Bartomeu
