We and the world

It is very easy, especially if one is young, to let oneself be swept along with the ways of the world, to go along with “everybody else” and to give oneself over to the intoxicating temptations that seem to be all around us.

Of course, the intoxication eventually wears off and we see (sometimes too late) the cliff over which temptation and peer pressure leads.

The ways of the world are thus fraught with peril and so Christians often speak of “being in the world, but not of the world.”

In today’s Gospel (John 17:11b-19), we hear an explanation of what this entails, as we are blessed to overhear these precious words of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Father as he prays for his disciples:

I gave them your word,
and the world hated them,
because they do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.

I do not ask that you take them out of the world
but that you keep them from the Evil One.

They do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.

Consecrate them in the truth.

Your word is truth.

As you sent me into the world,
so I sent them into the world.

May this prayer be fulfilled in you and me
today
and every day of our lives.