18 May 2021
Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
The Greek word used in Scripture for “church” is ekklesia, which is a feminine noun that means “an essembly” but literally translates to mean “called out from the whole” or “the world.” Two chapters prior to our Gospel today Jesus says, “If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you,” (John 15:19). Thus Jesus says to His Father, “I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world.”
Likewise the English word for “church” comes from the Greek kyriakos, which means “belonging to the Lord.” He says today’s Gospel, “I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine.” As Christians we belong to God; we belong to Jesus. He even says, “…I will no longer be in the world, but they are *in* the world…” yet He does not say, “They are *of* the world.”
This is the challenge of the Christian life: to live as though we do not belong here, but rather belong in Heaven, and to live as though we belong to God and to no one and nothing else before Him. Too often we try to make compromises with the world, forgetting St. Peter’s warning “…as aliens and sojourners to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against the soul,” (1 Peter 2:11), for our chosen ancestors who spoke to God, saying, “…before you we are strangers and travelers, like all our ancestors. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without a future,” (1 Chronicles 29:15). Let us live, then, as travelers passing through this foreign region on our way to our True Homeland. Let us live in such a way that the world sees we belong to God; let our song echo that of the Song of Songs, “I belong to my lover, and my lover belongs to me,” (Song of Songs 7:11).