A friend and I were once discussing our spiritual lives. She asked me when I last read the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John, and I replied that I didn't know. The seventeenth chapter is the fourth and final portion of Jesus's "Farewell Discourse," given right after the Last Supper. We tend to think of the discourse in terms of pithy, memorable quotes, whether you're inclined to think of John 14 through George Herbert's poem "The Call" or the Anglican classic "If ye love me," or if you think of John 15 through the allegory of the true vine. But in John 17, Jesus prays for the church and the world that he is about to leave. You may know it from the "that they all may be one" quote that gets thrown around every so often. But taken as a whole, the chapter, sometimes referred to as Jesus's "High Priestly Prayer," is a powerful reminder about Jesus's love for all humanity.

Jesus asks his Father that we be protected from the evil one, stating what Paul would say with more clarity to the church in Phillipi—our citizenship is in heaven. For us, that means that we have to be active participants in the mission of God, in the building of the kingdom of heaven here on earth. And that kingdom, as Paul tells the Romans, is "justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." (1)

Lent is a time for building the kingdom. We begin with the Litany of Penitence on Ash Wednesday, where we repent for "the wrongs we have done: for our willful ignorance of human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty," and we move to Good Friday, where we proclaim in the Solemn Collects that God is the "strength of all who suffer" and "lover of souls." These bookends are a challenge to us—can we recognize the wrongs we have done over the last year and then join hand in hand with God and each other to heal this suffering world? As we move through God's world today, let us join our prayers with the monks of Taize, who chant Paul’s words often, and all our fellow Christians: "Come, Lord! Open in us today the gates of your kingdom!" (2)

1. Romans 14:17, Douay-Rheims Bible.

2. “The Kingdom of God,” Taize.