17 May 2026
Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year A
The Seventh Sunday of Easter falls between the two Solemnities that mark the end of the Easter season, the Ascension and Pentecost.
The Liturgy invites us to listen to this Gospel passage (Jn 17:1–11) that helps us specifically to remain in this time of waiting, in this ‘in-between’ time, this suspended moment, in which the Church experiences absence and promise, separation and suspension, emptiness and fullness: an intermediate space.
We have reached the final part of that lengthy discourse which we have already heard over the past few weeks. Now this discourse becomes a prayer: Jesus is not speaking to the disciples, but to the Father in their presence. He is praying to the Father on their behalf.
And what does he ask for?
Jesus asks for three things.
The first request does not concern the disciples directly, but it affects them deeply.
Jesus asks: “Give glory to your son” (John 17:1).
In John, glory is the manifestation of love to the point of total self-giving.
Why is this important for the disciples? Because only if the Son is glorified—that is, only if he passes through the cross and returns to the Father—will the disciples be able to receive eternal life and know the true face of God.
The prayer therefore begins by asking that history may reach its fulfilment, so that the lives of the disciples may be lives lived in full.
Immediately afterwards, Jesus asks that the disciples may come to know the Father.
“This is eternal life: that they may know you” (Jn 17:3).
What Jesus speaks of is not an intellectual knowledge, but a relational one: it means entering into the communion between the Father and the Son.
Jesus presents the disciples to the Father as those who have received the Word, have believed, and have recognized the divine origin of the Son. His request is that this knowledge may grow, mature, and become life eternal starting from now.
Jesus prays that the disciples may remain within the relationship that He has opened up for them.
However, the entire passage we have just read prepares us for the third petition, which we find immediately after the conclusion of today’s Gospel: “Holy Father, keep them in your Name” (Jn 17:11b).
Jesus had already spoken of this Name earlier: “Father, I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world” (Jn 17:6).
In the Bible, the Name is synonymous with presence. Jesus, therefore, did not simply speak of God: He made Him visible, He made Him known (cf. Jn 1:18), He showed that God is Father, He revealed that His face is love, and He opened the disciples’ hearts to a relationship with Him.
And now He asks that in this Name—that is, in Him, in the Father—the disciples may be kept safe: this protection is the central request of these verses. He does not ask that they be strong, intelligent, capable, faithful or anything else: he asks that they be kept safe. Kept safe in the Name of the Father, that is, rooted in their relationship with Him, protected in their identity as children, preserved from being scattered and from fear. It is a request that anticipates Pentecost: the Spirit will be precisely this inner protection, this presence that dwells within and unifies.
The entire passage, moreover, is permeated by the theme of glory:
“Give glory to your son … I have glorified you… I have been glorified in them” (Jn 17:1, 4, 10).
The glory, which at Easter was revealed as love that gives itself to the very end, is now fulfilled in the Ascension, when the Son returns to the Father, and at Pentecost, where the Spirit makes the very life of the Son visible in the disciples.
Between these two feasts, glory is on its way: it passes from the Son to the community, like an inheritance that is about to be handed over and received.
Between these two feasts, the Church lives in the breath of Jesus’ prayer: she does not yet see the Spirit, but is already safeguarded in the Name; she is not yet on mission, but is already entrusted to the Father; she does not yet comprehend the fullness of glory, but is already enveloped by the movement of love that passes from the Son to the community.
+Pierbattista
*Translated from the original in Italian
