Taking part in the dialogue between the Father and Son
John 17:1-6
Jesus raised his eyes to heaven
and said, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son
may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that your
son may give eternal life to all you gave him. Now this is eternal life, that
they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus
Christ. I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to
do. Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before
the world began. I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the
world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your
word."
One of the great novelists of all
time is Jane Austen, who wrote such classics as Pride and Prejudice, Sense and
Sensibility, and Emma. Now, there’s one
thing glaringly absent from all her novels: she never wrote a dialogue between
two men without a woman present.
Why? Well, she confessed that she
couldn’t imagine what men would talk about when they are by themselves without
a woman present. How could she? Since she never witnessed two men talking
alone, she never recorded it. Frankly, I
don’t see what the great mystery is: guys only talk about sports, the weather
and good beer. Don’t worry, Jane, you
didn’t miss anything! Jane Austen was a
literary genius at capturing the sophistication and subtlety of conversations,
but there was one dialogue that not even she dared to depict.
In the
gospel today, we witness a rare and intimate conversation between Jesus and his
Father, a conversation no one had heard before.
Jesus pours out his heart to his Dad: his hopes, his fears, his joys and
his struggles. Like Jane Austen, we
could never have imagined what the Father and the Son would talk about when alone,
but now we can. These two guys at least
did not discuss sports or the weather.
And what is the topic of their conversation? Believe it or not, they actually talk about
us, you and me. Pope Benedict said the
Mass is where we get to witness, like a fly on the wall, the great dialogue between
the Father and the Son. But more than
being just passive witnesses, we get to share in that intimate convo, adding a
few lines here and there, like Jane Austen wished she could have witnessed the
conversation of two men alone. You see,
the Mass is the eternal dialogue between the Father and the Son, and we get to
contribute to that conversation. Don’t
mess up your lines!
May I suggest that this is one way
we can plunge more profoundly into the mystery of the Mass? For those of you who go regularly to Mass, we
can feel that it becomes rather routine and automatic, like driving through a
car wash. Instead, pay attention to the
prayers like Jane Austen would have listened eagerly to two men talking,
asking, “What could two men possibly be talking about??” Much of the Mass is that secret conversation
between the Father and the Son. That’s
also why, in the old Mass, the priest had his back to the people. It wasn’t really that he had his back to the
people; rather, it was that he turned his face to the Father, and he spoke on
behalf of Jesus to his Dad. In the old
Mass, that divine dialogue became explicitly clear. If you pay close attention, you’ll hear what
the Father and the Son’s favorite topic of conversation is: it’s actually you
and me, even while we’re still talking about the sports and weather.
Praised be Jesus Christ!
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