7th Week of Easter 2018 - Tuesday - The High Priest's Love for God and Man

There are many titles applied to Jesus throughout the Scriptures: he is the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of God, the Son of Man.  He is also called the High Priest.  Each title focuses on a particular aspect of who Jesus is and what that means for us.  Today’s Gospel is from the final section of Jesus’ farewell discourse known as his High Priestly Prayer.

Jesus turns from addressing the apostles and begins addressing the Father, praying that his Father might be glorified in what he is about to do: namely his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and that his disciples might receive eternal life through it.

In his High Priestly prayer Jesus opens a window into his relationship with His Father. The Father glorifies the Son, and the Son glorifies the Father. The Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father through his humble self-sacrifice. Jesus reveals the nature of God, that “God is love”, a reality St. John will reflect upon in his first New Testament Letter. Jesus reveals the inner nature of God and simultaneously calls his disciples to the same highest, purist form of self-giving. God’s life is to become our life, our lives must become characterized by divine love.

Whether you are an ordained priest,  a homeless beggar, a widow, or a farmer, like St. Isidore, whom the Church honors today, we are called to a life which glorifies God, a life in which the love that exists between the Father and the Son increasingly characterizes our own life.

Love isn’t easy. Love involves embracing suffering for the good of others, it involves self-sacrifice for those who have no way of repaying you. But by practicing this form of Christ-like love, our souls expand, our life obtains the purpose for which it was created.

Today each of us are called to bring God to others and bring others to God. God is to be glorified in us by accomplishing the work that God has given us to do, to bring others to believe in the one that God sent for our salvation.

May the entirety of our lives—our thoughts, words, actions, and attitudes, all be conformed this day to Jesus Our High Priest for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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For Catholics in all walks of life, that we may glorify God through our daily labors in service of the Lord.

Through the intercession of St. Isidore, we pray for farmers, day laborers, and those who work by the sweat of their brow, that they may receive a just reward for their laborers, and for the unemployed and underemployed.

That spouses may help each other to grow rich in the treasures of heaven, and all those preparing for Holy Matrimony may do so rightly and chastely in the eyes of God.

That all families may seek to model themselves after the Holy Family and always know their guidance and protection.

For the sick, the suffering, the lonely, and the dying, that they may know the consolation of the grace of God.

For the deceased members of our family, friends, and parish, for all of the poor souls in purgatory, and for all those who have fought and died for our nation’s freedom.