Church Fathers Commentary John 17

St. John Chrysostom: After saying, In the world you shall have tribulation, our Lord turns from admonition to prayer, thus teaching us in our tribulations to abandon all other things and flee to God.

The Venerable Bede: Jesus spoke these things—that is, the words He had said at the supper. He spoke partly while sitting, up to the words, Arise, let us go hence; and from there while standing, up to the end of the hymn which now begins: And lifted up His eyes and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify Your Son.

St. John Chrysostom: He lifted up His eyes to heaven to teach us intentness in our prayers: that we should stand with uplifted eyes, not of the body only, but of the mind.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Our Lord, in the form of a servant, could have prayed in silence if He had pleased, but He remembered that He had not only to pray but also to teach. His discourse and even His prayer were for His disciples’ edification, and for ours as well, who read of it.

The phrase Father, the hour is come shows that all time, and everything He did or allowed to be done, was at His disposal, for He is not subject to time. We must not suppose that this hour came by any fatal necessity, but rather by God’s ordering. Away with the notion that the stars could doom to death the Creator of the stars!

St. Hilary of Poitiers: He does not say that the day or the time, but that the hour is come. An hour is a portion of a day. What was this hour? It was the hour when He was to be spit upon, scourged, and crucified. But the Father glorifies the Son.

The sun failed in its course, and with it, all the other elements felt that death. The earth trembled under the weight of our Lord hanging on the Cross and testified that it did not have the power to hold within it Him who was dying. The centurion proclaimed, Truly this was the Son of God. The event fulfilled the prediction.

Our Lord had said, Glorify Your Son, testifying that He was not the Son in name only, but truly the Son. He said, Your Son. Many of us are sons of God, but the Son is not like us. For He is the true, proper Son by nature, not by adoption; in truth, not in name; by birth, not by creation.

Therefore, after His glorification, the manifestation of the truth was followed by confession. The centurion confesses Him to be the true Son of God, so that none of His believers might doubt what one of His persecutors could not deny.

St. Augustine of Hippo: But if He was glorified by His Passion, how much more was He glorified by His Resurrection? For His Passion showed His humility rather than His glory. So we must understand Father, the hour is come, glorify Your Son to mean, “The hour has come for sowing the seed of humility; do not defer the fruit of glory.”

St. Hilary of Poitiers: But perhaps this proves weakness in the Son—His waiting to be glorified by one superior to Himself. And who does not confess that the Father is superior, seeing that He Himself said, The Father is greater than I (John 14:28)? But beware that the honor of the Father does not impair the glory of the Son. It follows: That Your Son also may glorify You. The Son, then, is not weak, since He gives back in turn glory for the glory He receives. This petition for glory to be given and returned shows that the same divinity is in both.

St. Augustine of Hippo: But it is rightly asked how the Son can glorify the Father, when the Father’s eternal glory never experienced abasement in the form of a man and, with respect to its own divine perfection, cannot be added to. Among humans, however, this glory was less when God was known only in Judea. Therefore, the Son glorified the Father when the Gospel of Christ spread the knowledge of the Father among the Gentiles.

The prayer Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You means, in effect, “Raise Me from the dead, so that through Me You may be known to the whole world.” Then He further explains the way the Son glorifies the Father: As You have given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him (John 17:2).

Here, all flesh signifies all humankind, the part being put for the whole. And this power over all flesh, which the Father gave to Christ, must be understood with reference to His human nature.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: For having been made flesh Himself, He was about to restore eternal life to frail, corporeal, and mortal man.

If Christ is God—not begotten, but unbegotten—then this act of receiving power could be considered a weakness. But that is not the case if His receiving of power signifies His begetting, in which He received His very being. This gift cannot be counted as a weakness. For the Father is who He is in giving, and the Son remains God in having received the power to give eternal life.

St. John Chrysostom: He said, You have given Him power over all flesh, to show that His preaching extended not only to the Jews but to the whole world. But what does all flesh mean, since not all believed? As far as it depended on Him, His work was for everyone. If people did not heed His words, the fault was not His as the speaker, but theirs as the hearers who did not receive them.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He said, As You have given Him power over all flesh, so the Son may glorify You. This means the Son glorifies the Father by making Him known to all the flesh that the Father has given Him. For the Father has given it to Him in this way: that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: He then shows what eternal life is: And this is life eternal, that they might know You, the only true God. To know the only true God is life, but this alone does not constitute eternal life. What else is added? And Jesus Christ whom You have sent (John 17:3).

The Arians hold that since the Father is the only true, only just, and only wise God, the Son has no share in these attributes, for what is proper to one cannot be shared by another. And since they suppose these attributes are in the Father alone and not in the Son, they necessarily consider the Son a false and empty God.

But it must be clear to everyone that the reality of anything is shown by its power. For that is true wheat which, after growing a stalk and being protected by its husk, is threshed by the winnowing machine, ground into flour, baked into bread, and eaten as food, thereby fulfilling the nature and function of bread.

I ask, then, in what way is the truth of Divinity lacking in the Son, who has the very nature and power of Divinity? For He used the power of His nature to bring into being things that did not exist and to do everything that seemed good to Him.

When He says, You, the only, does He separate Himself from communion and unity with God? He would, except that He immediately adds, And Jesus Christ Whom You have sent. For the catholic faith confesses Christ to be true God precisely because it confesses the Father to be the only true God, since natural birth did not introduce any change of nature into the Only-Begotten God.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Dismissing the Arians, then, let us see if we are forced to confess that by the words, That they may know You to be the only true God, He means us to understand that the Father alone is the true God. Or does it mean that only the Three together—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—are to be called God? Does our Lord’s testimony authorize us to say that the Father is the only true God, the Son is the only true God, and the Holy Spirit is the only true God, and at the same time that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together—that is, the Trinity—are not three Gods, but one true God?

Or should we not understand the order of the words to be, “that they may know You and Jesus Christ, Whom You have sent, to be the only true God”? The Holy Spirit is necessarily understood here, because the Spirit is the love of the Father and the Son, consubstantial with both.

If, then, the Son glorifies You as You have given Him power over all flesh, and You have given Him this power that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him, and if This is life eternal, to know You, it follows that He glorifies You by making You known to all whom You have given Him.

Moreover, if the knowledge of God is eternal life, the more we advance in this knowledge, the more we advance in eternal life. But in eternal life we shall never die. Where there is no death, there will be perfect knowledge of God. There God will be most glorified, because His glory will be greatest.

Glory was defined among the ancients as fame accompanied with praise. But if a man is praised based on what is said of him, how will God be praised when He is seen? As it says in the Psalm, Blessed are they who dwell in Your house: they will be always praising You (Psalm 84:4). There will be praise of God without end, where there will be full knowledge of God. There the everlasting praise of God will be heard, for there will be full knowledge of God, and therefore the full glorifying of Him.

What He said to His servant Moses, I am that I am (Exodus 3:14), is what we shall contemplate in the life eternal.

For when sight makes our faith a reality, then eternity will take possession of and displace our mortality.

But God is first glorified here on earth when He is proclaimed, made known to, and believed in by people: I have glorified You on the earth.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: This new glory with which our Lord had glorified the Father does not imply any advancement in Godhead, but refers to the honor received from those who are converted from ignorance to knowledge.

St. John Chrysostom: He says, on the earth; for He had already been glorified in heaven, both with respect to the glory of His own nature and the adoration of the angels. The glory spoken of here, therefore, is not that which belongs to His substance, but that which pertains to the worship given by humanity. For this reason, it follows, I have finished the work which You gave Me to do.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He does not say, “You commanded Me,” but, You gave Me, which clearly implies grace. For what does human nature have that it has not received, even in the Only-Begotten? But how had He finished the work that had been given Him to do, when His Passion still remained for Him to undergo? He says He has finished it because He knows for certain that He will finish it.

St. John Chrysostom: Or, when He says, I have finished, it means He had done all His own part, or He had done the most important part of it, with that part standing for the whole (for the root of good was planted). Or, He speaks of the future as if it were already present.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: After this, so that we may understand the reward of His obedience and the mystery of the whole dispensation, He adds, And now, O Father, glorify Me with Your own Self with the glory which I had with You before the world was (John 17:5).

St. Augustine of Hippo: He had said above, Father, the hour is come: glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You. The order of these words shows that the Son was first to be glorified by the Father, so that the Father might then be glorified by the Son. But now He says, I have glorified You; and now, glorify Me, as if He had first glorified the Father and then asked to be glorified by Him.

We must understand that the first statement shows the order of events, while the second uses a past tense to express a future reality. The meaning is, “I will glorify You on the earth by finishing the work You have given Me to do, and now, Father, glorify Me.” This is the same essential request as the first one, except that here He adds the way He is to be glorified: with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

Some have taken this to mean that the human nature assumed by the Word would be changed into the Word—that the man would be changed into God or, more correctly, be lost in God. For no one would say that the Word of God would be doubled or made any greater by that change.

But we avoid this error if we understand “the glory which He had with the Father before the world was” to be the glory that God had predestined for Him. (For if we believe Him to be the Son of Man, we need not be afraid to say that He was predestined.) He now saw that this predestined time for His glorification had arrived, so that He might now receive what had been previously predestined. He prayed accordingly: And now, Father, glorify Me—that is, “it is now time that I should have, at Your right hand, that glory which I had with You through Your predestination.”

St. Hilary of Poitiers: Or He prayed that what was mortal might receive immortal glory, that the corruption of the flesh might be transformed and absorbed into the incorruption of the Spirit.

St. John Chrysostom: Having said, I have finished My work, He shows what kind of work it was, namely, that He should make known the name of God: I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world.

St. Augustine of Hippo: If He is speaking only of the disciples with whom He had supper, this has nothing to do with the glorification He spoke of earlier, with which the Son glorified the Father. For what glory is it to be known by only twelve or eleven men? But if by “the men whom You gave Me out of the world” He means all those who would later believe in Him, this is undoubtedly the glory with which the Son glorifies the Father. In this case, I have manifested Your name is the same as what He said before, I have glorified You, with the past tense being used for the future in both instances. However, what follows shows that He is speaking here of those who were already His disciples, not of all who would later believe in Him.

At the beginning of His prayer, then, our Lord is speaking of all believers—all to whom He would make the Father known, thereby glorifying Him. For after saying, that Your Son also may glorify You, and showing how that was to be done, He says, As You have given Him power over all flesh. Now let us hear what He says to the disciples: I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world. Had they not known the name of God when they were Jews? We read in the Psalms, In Judah is God known; His name is great in Israel (Psalm 76:1).

Therefore, I have manifested Your name must be understood not as the name of “God” in general, but of the Father's name specifically, which could not be manifested without the manifestation of the Son. The name of God, as the God of all creation, could not have been entirely unknown to any nation. As the Maker of the world, He was known among all peoples even before the spread of the Gospel. In Judah He was known as a God who was not to be worshiped with false gods. But His name as the Father of that Christ, by whom He took away the sins of the world, was unknown. It is this name that Christ now manifests to those whom the Father had given Him out of the world.

But how did He manifest it, when the hour had not yet come of which He said, The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in proverbs? We must understand that He used the past tense to speak of a future event.

St. John Chrysostom: Christ had already manifested to them by His words and deeds that He was the Son of the Father.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Whom you have given Me out of the world means those who were not of the world. But they were this way by regeneration, not by nature. What is meant by the phrase, Yours they were, and You gave them to Me? Did the Father ever possess anything without the Son? God forbid! But the Son of God possessed things that He did not possess as the Son of Man. For example, He possessed the universe with His Father even while He was still in His mother's womb.

Therefore, by saying, They were Yours, the Son of God does not separate Himself from the Father, but attributes all His power to Him, from whom He is and from whom He has this power. So, and You gave them to Me means that He, as man, had received the power to have them. Indeed, He Himself had given them to Himself—that is, Christ as God, with the Father, gave them to Christ as man. His purpose here is to show His unity with the Father and that it was the Father's will for them to believe in Him.

The Venerable Bede: And they have kept Your word. He calls Himself the Word of the Father because the Father created all things through Him, and because He contains all words in Himself. It is as if to say, “They have committed Me to memory so well that they will never forget Me.” Alternatively, they have kept Your word means that they have believed in Me, as it follows: Now they have known that all things whatever You have given Me are from You. Some read this as, Now I have known, etc., but this cannot be correct. For how could the Son be ignorant of what belongs to the Father? He is speaking of the disciples, as if to say, “They have learned that there is nothing in Me that is foreign to You, and that whatever I teach comes from You.”

St. Augustine of Hippo: The Father gave Him all things when, having all things, He begat Him.

St. John Chrysostom: And from where have they learned this? From My words, in which I taught them that I came forth from You. For this is what He has been striving to show throughout the entire Gospel: For I have given to them the words that You gave Me, and they have received them.

St. Augustine of Hippo: This means they have understood and remembered them. For a word is truly received when the mind comprehends it, as it follows: and have known surely that I came out from You. And so that no one might imagine that this knowledge was one of sight rather than faith, He adds, And they have believed (with “surely” being understood) that You sent Me. What they “believed surely” is what they “knew surely,” for I came out from You is the same as You sent Me.

They “believed surely”—not in the same way as their earlier belief, but “surely” in the sense that they were about to believe firmly, steadily, and unwaveringly, never again to be scattered to their own homes and leave Christ. The disciples were not yet as He describes them here, using the past tense. He is speaking of them as they would be after they had received the Holy Spirit.

The question of how the Father gave these words to the Son is easier to solve if we suppose that He received them from the Father as the Son of Man. But if we understand it as something He received as the Begotten of the Father, we must not imagine a time before He possessed them, as if He once existed without them. For whatever God the Father gave to God the Son, He gave in the act of begetting Him.

St. John Chrysostom: Since the disciples were still sad despite all our Lord’s consolations, from now on He addresses the Father to show the love He had for them. He says, I pray for them. He not only gives them what is His own but also asks another on their behalf as a further proof of His love.

St. Augustine of Hippo: When He adds, I pray not for the world, by “the world” He means those who live according to the lust of the world and have not been chosen by grace out of the world, as were those for whom He prayed. He continues, but for them whom You have given Me. It was because the Father had given them to Him that they did not belong to the world. Yet the Father, in giving them to the Son, did not lose what He had given, for Jesus says, For they are Yours.

St. John Chrysostom: He often repeats the phrase You have given Me to impress upon the disciples that everything was according to the Father’s will. He did not come to rob another but to take what was His own. Then, to show that this power was not recently received from the Father, He adds, And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine.

It is as if He were saying, “Let no one, hearing Me say, those whom You have given Me, suppose that they are separated from the Father, for what is Mine is His. Nor, because I said, They are Yours, should you suppose that they are separate from Me, for whatever is His is also Mine.”

St. Augustine of Hippo: From this, it is clear that all things the Father has, the Only-Begotten Son also has. He has them in that He is God, born from the Father and equal to the Father. This is not meant in the same way the elder son in the parable was told, All that I have is yours. In that case, “all” meant all creatures below the holy rational creature. But here, it means the rational creature itself, which is subject only to God.

Since this rational creature belongs to God the Father, it could not at the same time belong to God the Son unless the Son were equal to the Father. For it is impossible that the saints, of whom this is said, should be the property of anyone except the One who created and sanctified them.

When Jesus says elsewhere in speaking of the Holy Spirit, All that the Father has is Mine, He means all things that pertain to the divinity of the Father. For He adds, He [the Holy Spirit] shall receive of Mine, and the Holy Spirit would not receive from a creature that was subject to the Father and the Son.

St. John Chrysostom: Then He gives proof of this, saying, I am glorified in them. If they glorify Me by believing in Me and in You, it is certain that I have power over them, for no one is glorified by those over whom he has no power.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He speaks of this as already done, meaning it was predestined and certain to happen. But is this the same glorifying of which He speaks earlier: And now, O Father, glorify Me with Your own Self? If His glory is with the Father, then what does it mean here, in them? Perhaps it means that this very glory—His glory with the Father—was made known to them, and through them to all who believe.

St. John Chrysostom: And now I am no more in the world. This means that although I no longer appear in the flesh, I am glorified by those who die for Me, as they would for the Father, and who preach Me, as they would the Father.

St. Augustine of Hippo: At the time He was speaking, both He and His disciples were still in the world. Yet we must not understand the phrase I am no more in the world metaphorically, as referring to His heart and affections, for could there ever have been a time when He loved the things of the world? It must mean, therefore, that He was about to depart. Do we not say every day, when someone is about to leave or die, “that person is gone”?

This interpretation is confirmed by what follows, for He adds, And now I come to You. He then commends to His Father those whom He was about to leave: Holy Father, keep through Your own name those whom You have given Me. As a man, He prays to God for His disciples, whom He received from God. But notice what follows: that they may be one, as We are.

He does not say, “that they may be one with Us,” but that they may be one, meaning one in their nature, just as We are one in Ours. For in that He was God and man in one person, He prayed as a man; but as God, He was one with Him to whom He prayed.

He does not say, “That I and they may be one,” though He could have said this in the sense that He is the head of the Church and the Church is His body—not one thing, but one person, the head and the body being one Christ. But He is showing something else: namely, that His divinity is consubstantial with the Father. He prays that His people may be one in a similar way.

They are to be one in Christ, not only by sharing the same nature (in which mortal man is made equal to the angels) but also by sharing the same will, agreeing completely in the same mind, and being melted into one Spirit by the fire of love. This is the meaning of that they may be one as We are: just as the Father and the Son are one not only by equality of substance but also in will, so His people—for whom the Son is Mediator—may be one not only by a union of nature but also by a union of love.

St. John Chrysostom: Again, He speaks as a man: While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name—that is, by Your help. He speaks with condescension to the minds of His disciples, who thought they were safer in His physical presence.

St. Augustine of Hippo: The Son, as a man, kept His disciples in the Father’s name while He was among them in human form. The Father, in turn, kept them in the Son’s name, in that He heard those who asked in the Son’s name. But we must not take this in a fleshly way, as if the Father and Son kept us in turns. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit guard us at the same time, but Scripture does not raise us up unless it first stoops down to us.

Let us understand, then, that when our Lord says this, He is distinguishing the persons, not dividing the divine nature. It is not as though the Son kept His disciples by His bodily presence, and the Father was waiting to take over upon His departure. Rather, both kept them by spiritual power. When the Son withdrew His bodily presence, He still shared with the Father in their spiritual keeping.

For when the Son, as a man, received them into His keeping, He did not take them from the Father’s keeping. And when the Father gave them into the Son’s keeping, it was to the Son as a man, who was at the same time God. Those that You gave Me I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition—that is, the betrayer of Christ, who was predestined to perdition—that the Scripture might be fulfilled (see Psalm 109).

St. John Chrysostom: Judas was indeed the only one who perished then, but there were many after. When Jesus says, None of them is lost, He means, “as far as I am concerned,” as He says more clearly elsewhere: I will in no wise cast out. But when people cast themselves out, I will not draw them to Myself by force. He continues, And now I come to You.

Someone might ask, “Can You not keep them?” He can. Why, then, does He say this? He explains: that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. He says this so that they may not be alarmed in their still-imperfect state.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Or we could understand it this way: the joy He speaks of is the same joy mentioned before, related to the prayer that they may be one, as We are one. This joy, spoken of and bestowed by Him, is to be fulfilled in them, which is why He spoke these words while in the world. This joy is the peace and happiness of the life to come.

He says He spoke these things “in the world,” even though He had just said, I am no more in the world. This is because, inasmuch as He had not yet departed, He was still here; and inasmuch as He was about to depart, He was, in a certain sense, already not here.

St. John Chrysostom: Again, our Lord gives a reason why the disciples are worthy of obtaining such favor from the Father: I have given them your word; and the world has hated them. That is, they are hated for Your sake and on account of Your word.

St. Augustine of Hippo: They had not yet experienced the sufferings they would later encounter, but as was His custom, He speaks of the future in the past tense. He then gives the reason why the world hated them, namely, because they are not of the world. This was given to them by regeneration, for by nature they were of the world.

It was given to them so that they would not be of the world, just as He was not of the world, as it follows: Even as I am not of the world. He was never of the world, for He received His birth in the form of a servant from the Holy Spirit, from whom they were born again. But though they were no longer of the world, it was still necessary for them to be in the world, for He says, I pray not that you should take them out of the world.

The Venerable Bede: It is as if He were saying, "The time is now near when I will be taken out of the world, and therefore it is necessary for them to be left in the world to preach Me and You to the world." He prays not that they be taken out, but that you should keep them from the evil—from every evil, but especially from the evil of schism.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He repeats the same thing again: They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

St. John Chrysostom: Above, when He said, "those whom you gave Me out of the world," He meant their nature; here, He means their actions. They are not of the world because they have nothing in common with the earth; they are made citizens of heaven. In this, He shows His love for them, thus praising them to the Father.

The word "as," when used with respect to Him and the Father, expresses a likeness of nature, but between us and Christ, there is an immense distance. He prays, Keep them from the evil—that is, not only from dangers, but from falling away from the faith.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He prays, Sanctify them through your truth, for in this way they were to be kept from the evil. But it may be asked: How could they not be of the world when they were not yet sanctified in the truth? It is because the sanctified must still grow in sanctity, and this by the help of God’s grace.

The heirs of the New Testament are sanctified in that truth, of which the sanctifications of the Old Testament were shadows. They are sanctified in Christ, who said earlier, I am the way, the truth, and the life. It follows, Your word is truth. The Father, then, sanctified them in the truth—that is, in His Word, the Only-Begotten. By "them," He means the heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.

St. John Chrysostom: Alternatively, Sanctify them in your truth means, "Make them holy by the gift of the Holy Spirit and by sound doctrine," for sound doctrine gives knowledge of God and sanctifies the soul. Since He is speaking of doctrine, He adds, Your word is truth—that is, there is no lie in it, nor anything merely symbolic or physical. Again, Sanctify them in your truth may mean, "Set them apart for the ministry of the word and for preaching."

Glossa Ordinaria: As you have sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. They were sent for the same purpose for which Christ was sent into the world, as Paul said, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself... and has given to us the word of reconciliation. The word "as" does not express a perfect likeness between our Lord and His Apostles, but only as much as is possible for humans. He says, "have sent them," following His custom of speaking of the future in the past tense.

St. Augustine of Hippo: It is clear from this that He is still speaking of the Apostles, for the very word "Apostle" in Greek means "one who is sent." But since they are His members, in that He is the Head of the Church, He says, And for their sakes I sanctify Myself; that is, I sanctify them in Myself, since they are Myself.

To make His meaning clearer, He adds, That they also might be sanctified through the truth—that is, in Me. This is because the Word is truth, in which the Son of Man was sanctified from the time the Word was made flesh. For then He sanctified Himself in Himself—that is, Himself as man, in Himself as the Word—with the Word and man being one Christ.

But it is of His members that He said, And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, meaning He sanctifies them in Himself, since in Him they and He are one. So when He says, That they also might be sanctified in truth, "they also" means just as He is, and "in the truth" means in Himself.

St. John Chrysostom: Alternatively, for their sakes I sanctify Myself means, "I offer Myself as a sacrifice to You," for all sacrifices and things offered to God are called holy. And whereas this sanctification was formerly symbolic (with a sheep as the sacrifice), it is now done in truth, so He adds, That they also might be sanctified through the truth. This means, "For I also make them an offering to You." This could imply either that He who was offered up was their head, or that they would be offered up too, as the Apostle says, Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy.

St. Augustine of Hippo: When our Lord had prayed for His disciples, whom He also named Apostles, He added a prayer for all others who would believe in Him: Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.

St. John Chrysostom: This was another source of consolation for them: that they were to be the cause of the salvation of others.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He prays for all—that is, not only for those who were then alive, but also for those who were yet to be born. He prays not only for those who heard the Apostles themselves, but for us who were born long after their death. We have all believed in Christ through their word, for they first heard that word from Christ and then preached it to others. In this way, it has come down to us and will continue to go down to all posterity.

Yet we may see that in this prayer there are some disciples for whom He does not pray: namely, those who were not with Him at the time and were not going to believe through the Apostles’ word later, because they already believed. Was Nathanael with Him then, or Joseph of Arimathea, and the many others who, John says, believed in Him? I do not mention old Simeon, or Anna the prophetess, Zechariah, Elizabeth, or John the Baptist, for one might answer that it was not necessary to pray for those who were deceased, as they had departed with such rich merits.

Regarding the former group, then, we must understand that they did not yet believe in Him in the way He wished. It was only after His resurrection, when the Apostles were taught and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, that they attained a right faith. The case of Paul, however, still remains—an Apostle not of men, neither by man—as does the case of the thief on the cross, who believed when even the teachers of the faith were falling away. We must therefore understand “their word” to mean the word of faith itself, which they preached to the world. It is called “their word” because it was preached first and foremost by them. For it was being preached by them when Paul received it by revelation from Jesus Christ Himself, and in this sense, the thief also believed their word.

For this reason, in this prayer the Redeemer prays for all whom He redeemed, both present and future. Then follows the very thing for which He prays: That they all may be one. He asks for all people the same thing He asked for the disciples above: that all of us—both we and they—may be one.

St. John Chrysostom: He concludes His prayer with this request for unanimity and then begins a discourse on the same subject: A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: This unity is commended by the great example of unity: As you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us. This means that just as the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father, so after the likeness of this unity, all may be one in the Father and in the Son.

St. John Chrysostom: Here again, the word “as” does not express a perfect likeness, but only a likeness as far as is possible for human beings. It is similar to when He says, Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.

St. Augustine of Hippo: We must particularly observe here that our Lord did not say, “that we may be all one,” but that they may be all one, as you, Father, in Me, and I in You, are one. The Father is in the Son in such a way that They are one because They are of one substance. We, however, can be one in Them, but not with Them, because we and They are not of one substance. They are in us and we are in Them in such a way that They are one in Their nature, while we are one in our nature. They are in us as God is in the temple; we are in Them as a creature is in its Creator. Therefore, He adds the words in Us to show that our being made one through love must be attributed to the grace of God, not to ourselves.

Alternatively, it shows that in ourselves we cannot be one, as we are severed from each other by various pleasures, sinful desires, and the pollution of sin. We must be cleansed from these by a Mediator in order to be one in Him.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: Heretics try to explain away the words, I and my Father are one, which prove a unity of nature. They attempt to reduce them to mean merely a unity of natural love and agreement of will. To do this, they bring forward these words of our Lord as an example of their kind of unity: That they may be all one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You.

But though impiety can deceive its own understanding, it cannot alter the meaning of the words themselves. For those who are born again into a nature that gives unity in eternal life cease to be one merely in will; through their regeneration, they acquire the same nature. The Father and Son alone, however, are properly one, because God, the only-begotten of God, can exist only in that nature from which He is derived.

St. Augustine of Hippo: But why does He say, That the world may believe that you have sent me? Will the world believe when we are all one in the Father and the Son? Is not this unity the eternal peace that is the reward of faith, rather than faith itself? Even though in this life all of us who hold to the same common faith are one, this unity is not the means to belief, but the consequence of it.

What, then, is the meaning of, That all may be one, that the world may believe? He prays for the world when He says, Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word. From this, it appears that He does not make this unity the cause of the world believing. Rather, He prays that the world may believe, just as He prays that they all may be one. The meaning will be clearer if we mentally insert the word “ask” into each clause: I ask that they all may be one; I ask that they may be one in Us; I ask that the world may believe that You have sent Me.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: Alternatively, the world will believe that the Son is sent from the Father for this very reason: namely, because all who believe in Him are one in the Father and the Son.

St. John Chrysostom: For there is no scandal as great as division, whereas unity among believers is a powerful argument for belief. As He said at the beginning of His discourse, By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. For if they quarrel, they will not be seen as the disciples of a peacemaking Master. And if I am not a peacemaker, He implies, they will not acknowledge Me as sent from God.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Then our Savior, who showed Himself to be man by praying to the Father, now shows that, as God with the Father, He Himself does what He prays for: And the glory which you gave me I have given them. What is this glory but immortality, which human nature was about to receive in Him? He expresses this as a past event, even though it was still future, because it was established by unchangeable predestination.

We must understand that the glory of immortality, which He says was given to Him by the Father, He also gave to Himself. For when the Son is silent about His own cooperation in the Father’s work, He shows His humility; when He is silent about the Father’s cooperation in His work, He shows His equality. Thus, He does not disconnect Himself from the Father’s work when He says, The glory which you gave me, nor does He disconnect the Father from His work when He says, I have given them.

But just as He was pleased to obtain the unity of all people by praying to the Father, so now He is pleased to bring about the same result by His own gift, for He continues, That they may be one, even as we are one.

St. John Chrysostom: By “glory,” He means miracles, doctrines, and unity—and this unity is the greater glory. For all who believed through the Apostles are one. If any separated, it was due to their own carelessness, though our Lord certainly anticipated this would happen.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: Through this giving and receiving of honor, then, all are one. But I do not yet grasp how this makes all one. Our Lord, however, explains the progression and order for consummating this unity when He adds, I in them, and you in me. Therefore, inasmuch as He was in the Father by His divine nature, we are in Him by His incarnation, and He is in us by the mystery of the sacrament, a perfect union by means of a Mediator was established.

St. John Chrysostom: Elsewhere He says of Himself and the Father, We will come unto him, and make our abode with him, thereby, by mentioning two persons, stopping the mouths of the Sabellians. Here, by saying that the Father comes to the disciples through Him, He refutes the notion of the Arians.

St. Augustine of Hippo: This is not said, however, as if to mean that the Father is not in us, or that we are not in the Father. He says this only to show that He is the Mediator between God and humanity. What He adds, That they may be made perfect in one, shows that the reconciliation made by this Mediator extends even to the enjoyment of everlasting blessedness.

Consequently, what follows, That the world may know that you have sent me, must not be taken to mean the same as the words just before, That the world may believe. For as long as we believe what we do not see, we are not yet made perfect, as we will be when we have merited to see what we believe. So when He speaks of their being made perfect, we are to understand a knowledge that comes by sight, not one that comes by faith. Those who believe are the world—not a permanent enemy, but a world changed from an enemy to a friend.

This is shown by what follows: And have loved them as you have loved me. The Father loves us in the Son because He elected us in Him. These words do not prove that we are equal to the Only-Begotten Son, for this mode of expression—“as one thing, so another”—does not always signify equality. It sometimes only means that because of one thing, another thing happens.

And that is its meaning here: You have loved them as you have loved me, means, “You have loved them because You have loved Me.” There is no reason for God to love His members, except that He loves the Head. But since He hates nothing that He has made, who can adequately express how much He loves the members of His Only-Begotten Son, and how much more the Only-Begotten Himself?