May 17, 2026: Seventh Sunday of Easter

Gospel: John 17:1-11a

Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him. Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ. I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began.

“I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you gave me is from you, because the words you gave to me I have given to them, and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you and they have believed that you sent me. I pray for them. 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, and I have been glorified in them. And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.”

Reflection

“I pray for them.”

Am I the only one who has a sense that God must grow very tired of hearing my prayers? I talk to myself sometimes and tell myself to stop directing God about how I want my prayers answered. This works about 27 percent of the time. The rest of the time, I am directing the prayer request and the response I am seeking.

A Sister of Providence friend cautioned me about the practice of directing God’s response in prayer. Her counsel was to say the need before God and end the sentence with a firm period. Do not direct God. Do not instruct God about what you want the response to be.

Just ask God to receive the prayer. I hear her voice in my mind every day when I pray. It changes my prayer behavior about 50 percent of the time. I am improving.

Enough about me and my prayers! This scripture tells us that Jesus prays for US. If you missed this in your first reading, take a moment and read the passage again. The sentence is on line 20. What does it mean for us to understand that Jesus prays for us?

I find it humbling, surprising, interesting and quite frankly, amazing. Jesus prays for ME. Little old me? There are billions of “little old me’s” on this planet alone!

If Jesus prays for me, for each of us, this must mean we are quite beloved. I find that reassuring. If Jesus prays for each of us, it seems to me we are to be praying for a whole lot of requests and people we may be neglecting.

I have some work to do in gaining confidence in my prayer practices.

Action

Pray. Just pray.

Do not worry about how you do it.

Pray. Just pray.