Seventh Sunday of Easter [English]

The Majesty The Passion: Jesus takes leave of the Apostles - Painting by Duccio di Buonpense

The Hour of the Gift: Entering into the Intimacy of the Father

Mass Readings: Acts 1:12-14; Psalm 26/27; 1 Pet 4:13-16; Jn 17:1b-11a

We find ourselves in a very particular moment of the liturgical year, a sort of "middle earth": Jesus has ascended into heaven, taking our humanity into the glory of the Father, and the Holy Spirit has not yet descended with the clash and fire of Pentecost. It is the time of patience, the time of the Upper Room.

The first reading shows us the Apostles returning to Jerusalem. It is a very short journey, a Sabbath day's walk, but it is the deepest journey they have to make: the one that leads from outward astonishment to the interiority of the upper room. They are all there, named one by one, with Mary. They do nothing, they wait; or rather, they do the only thing that allows God to act: they are devoted to prayer; they create a vacuum so that God can fill it.

It is in this climate of waiting that the Gospel of John allows us to hear the priestly prayer of Jesus, which is the Lord's testament: before passing from this world to the Father, Jesus delivers His heart to us. He does not give us administrative instructions, He gives us His relationship with the Father, revealing to us that it is there that our true identity is played out. This Sunday invites us to understand that our life is not a solitary wandering, but that it is enveloped, carried, and saved by a prayer that was pronounced even before we existed.

First Point: The Way of Return and the Upper Room

The first reading tells us that the Apostles return from the Mount of Olives, having just seen Jesus rise. And the text gives us a magnificent detail: they return to the upper room "where they were staying." It is not a foreign place, it is the place of intimacy, where they shared the Last Supper, where they heard Jesus' last secrets. The transition between the Ascension and Pentecost teaches us an essential thing: to receive the Spirit of God, one must know how to return home, to enter into one's interiority.

The prayer spoken of in the Book of Acts goes far beyond a recitation of formulas; the text tells us, "All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer." What unites these men and women, therefore, is that they all have the same lack; they are waiting for the promise. Often, in our lives, we flee from the void, we fill our days with noise, activities, and entertainment so as not to feel the absence. But the Apostles show us that the absence of Jesus in His fleshly form is the cradle of His presence in the Spirit. Mary is there, she who is the expert in listening and silence; she teaches them to transform waiting into welcoming.

Inhabiting the Way, as we have been meditating on for several days, is precisely this: knowing how to return to one's upper room when everything seems to have stopped. Inhabiting the Way means understanding that the moments when we have the impression that God is doing nothing are often the moments when He is preparing the greatest explosion of life. Devoted prayer is the art of keeping the door of our heart open, even when no one seems to knock: this is what it means to watch in silence.

Second Point: The Hour of Glory and the Weight of Love

In today's Gospel from Saint John, Jesus lifts His eyes to heaven and says: "Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son." We tend to see glory as light, applause, success... But in fact, in the language of Jesus, and particularly in John, glory is the Cross! And why? Because glory is the manifestation of what God is, and God is Love: the Hour of Jesus is the moment when Love will give itself without reserve, to the very end.

The glory of God is not that He is powerful and we are crushed, it is that He is capable of forgiving, of loving unto death. In His prayer, Jesus asks to be glorified so that the Father may be glorified. It is a mirror movement: the Son manifests the Father by loving as the Father loves. This gesture of Jesus is an invitation for us to change our definition of success; indeed, our glory as Christians is not to be the strongest or the most numerous, but to let this self-giving love shine through.

Jesus also speaks of His "authority over all flesh." This power is not a domination but a capacity to give life. Christ received the power to tear us away from the fatality of the flesh, that is to say, from the fatality of a life that ends in death, to introduce us into eternity. This glory He speaks of is already at work in the Upper Room, at that very moment. These men who are afraid are being enveloped by the glory of the Son. They do not know it yet, but their fragility is becoming the place where God will manifest His weight of love, because in Hebrew, glory, Kabod, means "weight", which expresses value. The love of God has weight; it gives a consistency to our lives which, without Him, would be like vapor, like mist.

Third Point: Eternal Life as Intimate Knowledge

Still in the Gospel, Jesus gives us a revolutionary definition of eternal life: "And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." We often think that eternal life is a reward that begins after death, a sort of x time. But for Jesus, eternal life is a quality of relationship that begins here and now.

The word "know" in the Bible is not an intellectual knowledge, it is not knowing theories about God or having read books of theology, no! To know is above all to love, it is the experience of intimacy. So Jesus tells us that eternal life is having a relationship with the Father through the Son; and therefore, if you begin to love, if you begin to trust God as a Father, you have already entered into eternal life. And in this case, death will not be able to take anything away from that; it will only tear the veil.

That is why this text, this prayer of Jesus, this testament of His is so important: Jesus wants to introduce us to this knowledge. He wants us to know, in fact, that we are not products of chance, but beings desired by the Father. And faith is this recognition, realizing that everything we have — our breath, our capacities, our loves, and above all salvation — is a gift that comes from a single source: "They know that everything you have given me is from you." Eternal life is living in the gratitude of this source, and ceasing to want to manufacture oneself to please God who has already given us everything by His grace.

Fourth Point: We Are the Father's Gift to the Son

There is a very strong phrase in this Gospel that must fill us with joy: "They were yours, and you gave them to me"; Jesus tells the Father that we are a gift. Let us reflect on this for a moment. In the midst of our complexes, our feelings of guilt, our fatigues, Jesus looks at us and says to the Father: "Thank you for this gift You gave Me."

We belong to the Father, and He has entrusted us to the Son; we are the treasure that Jesus carries with Him in His prayer: "I am praying for them." Jesus, therefore, does not pray for an abstraction, He prays for concrete faces, for the names that were in the upper room and for our names today: His prayer is a rampart! If we knew that the Lord is pleading for us at every moment before the Father, what would we be afraid of? As the psalm says: "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?".

This belonging is what makes us free. "All mine are yours, and yours are mine." Jesus brings us into this circulation of goods. Nothing that happens to us is foreign to God; our joys are His, our sufferings are His. That is why Saint Peter tells us in the second reading not to be ashamed to suffer as Christians: if we suffer for Christ, it is because we share in His glory, "because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you" (cf. Second reading). We are not victims of fate; we are members of a divine family pilgrimaging in the world.

Fifth Point: In the World Without Being of the World

Finally, Jesus ends this passage by saying: "And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you," which perfectly expresses our condition as Christians. Indeed, we are "in" the world, meaning that we share the bills to pay, illnesses, social tensions, work challenges... We do not have a free pass to avoid the difficulties of human existence.

But, although we are in the world, we are not "of" the world. Our source of nourishment is not the logic of the world. The logic of the world is the survival of the fittest, the fear of lack, the pursuit of power, while the logic of those in the upper room is trust, prayer, and mutual love. Jesus leaves for the Father to open the way for us, but He leaves us here as ambassadors.

To be a Christian, then, is to be a bridge. It is to be the one who, while having his feet in the mud of history, keeps his eyes raised to the Father because he knows he is loved. Jesus, in this testament, prays that we remain united, that we keep His Word. His prayer is the strength that allows us not to dissolve into the world. We must be aware that we are in the world to transform it, and not to avoid it, and even less for it to transform us. And the Christian transforms this world not by his speeches, but by this "glory" of which Jesus speaks, that is, by letting the Father's love shine through our flaws.

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Conclusion and Application for Our Day

This Seventh Sunday of Easter is a call to radical trust. We are in the time of waiting, but it is a waiting inhabited by Jesus' prayer for us. To put this into practice today, I invite you to:

• Join your own upper room. Take a moment of true silence. Close your door, turn off your phone, and imagine that you are in that Upper Room with Mary and the Apostles; do not ask for anything, do not get escalated; content yourself with simply "remaining" there. Remember that Jesus is saying to the Father: "This one, that one, is the gift You gave Me, and I pray for him/her." Let this truth descend into your heart until it becomes your peace.

• Learn to recognize Eternal Life in your relationships. Do not see others as competitors or obstacles, but try to "know" them in the biblical sense, with the gaze of God. Bring a look of blessing upon those you will cross paths with. Remember that eternal life begins when we begin to love. A simple act of patience or a word of kindness today is already a piece of eternity entering into time.

• And finally, do not fear misunderstandings. If, as Saint Peter says, you sometimes feel insulted or cast aside because of your faith, do not react with bitterness. Remember that "the Spirit of glory rests upon you"; your identity does not depend on the world's approval, but on your belonging to the Father. Be proud to bear the name of Christian, for it is the name of those who are loved unconditionally.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, You who lift Your eyes to the Father to entrust me to His tenderness, I thank You. Thank You for bringing me out of spiritual orphanhood to give me Your own family.

Holy Spirit, come inhabit my upper room. In my moments of waiting, emptiness, or uncertainty, teach me not to flee, but to remain devoted to prayer. Teach me this "one accord" with my brothers and sisters. Help me to know the Father, not as an idea, but as the One who gives me life, breath, and being.

Father, I am Yours. Thank You for giving me to Your Son. Keep me in Your name in the midst of this world. May I not be frightened by trials, but may I know how to see in them the path to Your glory. Make me a witness of Your eternal life here and now, so that Your peace may radiate upon everyone I meet. Amen.