Ss Edmund Campion, Robert Southwell and companions SJ | Tuesday 1 December 2020

Today is Tuesday the 1 December, the feast of Ss Edmund Campion, Robert Southwell, Alexander Briant and Ralph Sherwin.

The community of Taizé sing Mane Nobiscum. Stay with us, Lord Jesus Christ.

Today’s reading is from the Gospel of John.

John 17:11-21

And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

Today we are celebrating the memory of four men who were executed, three of them on this day in 1581, and one in February 1595, for what in that very odd time was the crime of being Catholic priests. Three of them were Jesuits, and thought their lives well spent, as they came to the moment of terrible death. In today’s reading we are eavesdropping on Jesus, on the night before his own terrible death, praying to his Father, as his disciples listen.

As you eavesdrop on Jesus’ prayer, you might like to ask what Jesus means by “the world”…….Then, how do you think the Father might protect them (us) “from the Evil One”?

Jesus prays that the Father will “sanctify them in the Truth”; what do you think that might mean, and how might it happen?

Now listen as the passage is read again, and ask what is meant by Jesus’ prayer that “they may all be one”. How would we know if it happens, and what do you think we should do to bring it about?

Finally, and in the light of what you have experienced during these few minutes, you might like to put your feelings in the form of a prayer to Jesus or to his Father. What are the words that come to your lips?

O Wisdom

Lord and Ruler

Root of Jesse

Key of David

Rising Sun

King of the Nations

Emmanuel

Come, Lord Jesus