Jesus Prays for His Disciples

If you were told that you have a terminal illness and will die in a week or two, what would you do?

All of us will be shocked and frightened at least for a couple of minutes. If our faith is strong, we will remember scripture and smile at death and ask, “Where is you sting?,” and know that victory is ours. But even in the face of death, we will think about ourselves before we think about everyone else, like our loved ones we are going to leave behind. We are good Christians and many of us will rush to the confessional so that we are clean before God, when we meet Him. Some of us will make a to-do list or a bucket list of things we would like to do before we die. We will eat the meals we love, go to visit places we love or have not seen yet. Those who can afford will go for a dream holiday. Imagine yourself in this situation, and please feel free to add to the list.

Now, I break the second terrifying news to you that you will suffer a terribly and death will not come easily. You will struggle to breathe and will bleed through your skin and every muscle of your body will ache as if it was being pulled out of your body and the entire time you are suffering there will be a helmet of needles put in your head for your treatment to inject medication. You will not be resting on a bed but a rough floor with a wooden plank for a bed.

Wow, what a way to die. How passionate it will be! How many of you will smile now after knowing this. How many of us will now be able to put the welfare of others before our painful death. How many of us can now look at death or say good by to our family and friends with a smile?

I hope many of you have answered that, and are able to will smile with God’s help.

Dear family in today’s gospel, we have our dear Lord and Saviour pleading to God the Father on behalf of His disciples even when He is so close to the passionate climax of His ministry. Jesus, who is fully divine and fully human, in His omniscience knows what is going to happen, and this knowledge leads to Him to sweating blood. Yet Jesus, through this act of prayer and pleading to God, sets an example for us to love others even to death.

Jesus is more concerned about leaving them alone than His passionate act of complete giving of Himself in exchange for us on the cross.

Is our love like that of Jesus.When we call ourselves Christians, we are telling the world that we are imitators of Christ. Ate we imitating Him in the way we live others?

My dear family in Christ, it’s time to give up the court cases, the grudges, the hurts we have harboured for so long, and start praying and pleading for others and ourselves. Let us let go of all the worldly things that keeps us divided and let us stretch out our hands to give life and to receive it in humility.

Scared Heart of Jesus make our heart like yours. Amen.