We use the word glory a lot in the life of prayer.

In a general sense glory is one of those attractive words, a word that we don’t normally use in a negative way. We like to attach ourselves to it if we can, for example by engaging with things like coronations, royal weddings and the like. Sometimes we use the term “reflected glory”, a glory that is not ours but that we are associated with in some way.

Glory was an important concept in the world that Jesus inhabited. Glory comes from the Latin, “Gloria” meaning fame or renown. Glory was the preoccupation of the ruling class – conquest, palaces, and slaves. The elevation of one over the other by superiority and often vicious oppression.

The Jewish understanding of glory was different, they had a Hebrew word for it – the Shekinah. For the Jews glory – the Shekinah – was the presence of God, for example in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire in the desert when the Jews left Egypt. The Shekinah was also understood to be present in the Tabernacle and the Temple in Jerusalem. The word Shekinah is not found in the Bible but it was a concept that biblical scholars, teachers and rabbis, including Jesus, would recognise and understand.

The setting for Sunday’s Gospel is where Jesus is preparing and strengthening the apostles for His departure, in this instance not His Ascension into heaven, but the departure of his death. Understandably He turns to His Father in prayer. 

Jesus asks His Father to glorify him through the exercise of the power that the Father has given Him. But this is not the power of the Emperor Tiberius in Rome, the Procurator Pilate, or that of King Herod, a power associated with force and coercion, a power limited by time, but something much more significant, the power of Jesus offering eternal life to those who follow Him. A power of service and love. A glory of light and life – eternal life.

Though they did not know it at the time the apostles were bring invited to share in this glory of Jesus. The glory of a glorious eternity, not one of sceptres, jewels and palaces, and not built on the foundations of the subjugation of others, but a glory created by limitless love, of limitless generosity and limitless reciprocity, the ultimate expression of love. The glory which is the relationship between the Father and the Son enwrapped by the Holy Spirit.

The invitation to participation in this divine glory is for all people in all times and places. This glory is meant for you; it was and is intended for you from the foundation of the world. It is only our own frailty, our weakness, and our sin that keeps us from it. 

Being in the world, as we are, is hard. A thousand snares surround us, what are we to do?

Through our baptism we belong to God our loving Father and He gives us into the care of his beloved son. All that Jesus has belongs to the Father, and all that the Father has belongs to Jesus. Because we are in the world Jesus tells us today that He prays for us; He prays that we will choose eternal life over eternal death, eternal glory over eternal shame, that we will, though the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the love of God and each other, share in the "shekinah" of God the Most High. 

We are God’s sons and daughter not God’s slaves, He gives us the means of realising our eternal destiny, our eternal glory, it’s really down to us. Jesus prays for us that this may be so, let’s pray for each other too.

God bless and keep you over the coming week.

Fr Chris