Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C

Acts 15:1-2, 22-29

Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8

Revelation 21:10-14, 22-23

John 14:23-29

In the wake of last Sunday’s special motif, the liturgy takes us back to the Cenacle, the room of the Last Supper, to hear once again the words the Good Shepherd said on that unique night when He instituted the new and eternal covenant with its unbloody sacrifice.

Today’s Gospel picks up where it was left off in Holy Thursday’s Gospel. The few verses we hear today work as a sort of exordium of what is known as the Farewell Discourse in the Gospel of St. John (Jn 13:31-17:26). They go straight to the core of the mystery: glorification and love (agape.) We may say that this is the statement of the thesis Jesus will expand on throughout the entire discourse or sermon, which will conclude in Chapter 17 in a way that reminds us of these opening verses we hear today.

Readers who are familiar with the Gospel of John know that the employment of language by this evangelist is bewildering, at least according to the common categories we normally use in our habitual exchanges. The surprise appears right from the get-go with Jesus saying, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and God will glorify him at once” (John 13:31-32). 

What is not clear is the use of the term glorification. At first glance, the play with the word to glorify confuses us. Most of us, when thinking of glorification, think in terms of exaltation, fame and glory in the sense of popular recognition. But if we read the fourth Gospel carefully, we come to the realization that the primary sense of the verb refers to the crucifixion, which few people will consider a glorification. Dying on a cross was not part of a good resumé. St. Paul clearly states the general appreciation of crucifixion: “We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23). He himself had to grapple with the reality of that mystery!

This is really putting things upside down. We understand it only through the eyes of faith. Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard distinguished three main types of people based on their focus and approach to life: the aesthetic (focused on immediate sensible appearances), the ethical (focused on moral duty and societal obligations based on the use of reason) and the religious (focused on faith and a relationship with God). The only way to make the jump to the third type is by looking at the passionate, almost foolish, love of God.

Jesus indicates precisely this when he states the second part of His “thesis”: “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). We all desire to love and to be loved. This is built into our nature. Neither the aesthetic nor the ethical person will reject this. But Jesus does not stop with “love one another.” He explicitly states, “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” His glory consists in the fact that he carried that love to the extreme, as St. Paul indicates, “Christ, while we were still helpless, died at the appointed time for the ungodly … God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6,8).

We can spot a mysterious connection here. The term “glory” in Greek is doxa, which carries the basic meaning of “radiance” or “splendor.” The related verb “to glorify” is doxazo, which means “to cause to shine.” Now, when somebody falls in love, it is even visible for others because they can see some sort of glowing in the person’s face. Hence, we can say that love causes radiance or splendor. Therefore, we can say that Jesus states like a tautology by referring to crucifixion as glorification because the Cross expresses precisely the manifestation of His love that shines in a unique way, as He Himself already pointed out, “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). In a few words, there is no other true glorification than the one given by authentic love.