Church Fathers Commentary John 17:1-5

"These things spake Jesus; and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that the son may glorify thee: even as thou gavest him authority over all flesh, that to all whom thou hast given him, he should give eternal life. And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, [even] Jesus Christ. I glorified thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do. And now, Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." — John 17:1-5 (ASV)

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.