We do not belong to the world, but to Christ; He says so in our Gospel yesterday and today. “They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.” And so He asks His Father to consecrate us in the truth, to set us apart in dedication to Him just as in days of old when God said to His chosen people “…you will be my treasured possession among all people, though all the earth is mine. You will be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation,” but only if “…you obey me completely and keep my covenant,” (Exodus 19:5-6). We are so consecrated by our Baptism; by this we are separated from the world, as a shepherd separates out his sheep from that of his neighbor’s.
Interestingly Jesus says, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One.” Why consecrate us specifically in the truth? God does not want to lose a single one of us, and He will never let any one of us go or cast us out: the only way God loses one of His sheep is by one of us willingly wandering away, when we are deceived by the lies of the Evil One, for he “…does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies,” (John 8:44). Thus Jesus, who is the Truth (John 14:6), who says, “When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me,” asks the Father to consecrate us in the truth—in Jesus—that He may always protect us, He who has promised “…behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age,” (Matthew 28:20).