Section 151
Jesus' prayer for his disciples and all who believe
Jerusalem, in the upper room → The Mount of Olives
John 17:1-26
1After saying these things, Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that your Son may also glorify you, 2just as you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4I have glorified you on earth. I have completed the work you have given me to do. 5And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. 6“I have revealed your name to the people you have given me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7They now know that everything you have given me is from you. 8For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and truly know that I came from you. They have also come to believe that you sent me. 9I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those you have given me, for they are yours. 10All I have is yours, and all you have is mine, and I have been glorified in them. 11I will no longer remain in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, so that they may be one, just as we are one. 12While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name. I have guarded those you have given me, and not one of them has perished except the son of destruction, so that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made full within them. 14I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. 16They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17Sanctify them by your truth; your word is truth. 18Just as you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19For their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they too may be sanctified by the truth. 20“I do not ask on behalf of them alone, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I am in you, that they also may be one in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. 22I have given them the glory that you gave me, so that they may be one, just as we are one, 23I in them and you in me, so that they may be perfected into one, and so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them just as you have loved me. 24Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory, which you gave me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and these men know that you have sent me. 26I have made your name known to them, and will continue to make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and so that I may be in them.”
Notes
Mount of Olives
The mountainous ridge called the Mount of Olives stretches totay from the Hebrew University Mount Scopus campus in the north to the Jewish cemetery and beyond, to the village of Silwan in the south. Between these two ends of the mountain are the olive trees from which the mountain takes its name. The area at the bottom of the mountain would have been the place for the olive gardens and an olive press, “Gat shemen” in Hebrew, from which the name “Gethsemane” comes.
The gospels record on more than one occasion Jesus’ sorrow for Jerusalem as he made his way down the slopes of the Mount of Olives. It was a path he would have known from childhood from His many visits to Jerusalem.
Down the road from Bethphage He came riding on a donkey colt with palm branches symbolic of Judaea strewn along the way. “Hosanna!” (“save now!”) was the cry upon the lips of the people (Matthew 21:1-9). This prayer from Psalm 118:25 was a request for salvation. Yet Jesus knew that these cries would be changed within a week to “Crucify him!” He wept again for Jerusalem, for He knew what would befall the people in less than one generation as the city would be besieged and taken.
Upper Room
The Upper room, or Cenacle, commemorates the place where the last Supper was eaten and Holy Communion was instituted. The Gospels tell us nothing of the location of the house, but there is good indication it would have been on the western hill where a wealthy man would have had an upper room on his house. Archaeological excavations in the Jewish quarter show that there were large houses in this area during the time of Christ.
There is a possibility that this is indeed the correct location of the Upper Room. A church was built on this site soon after the death of Jesus. It must have survived the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Bishop Epiphanius wrote of how Emperor Hadrian made an inspection tour of Jerusalem in 130 A.D. and found “everything razed except for a few houses and a certain small church of the Christians which stood on Mount Zion in the place where the disciples returned after the ascension”. This church was destroyed and rebuilt many times over the following centuries before being handed over to the Franciscans who restored the room giving it its present Gothic appearance (14th century).