The Church prays around Mary and Jesus prays to his Father. These are the dominant themes of today's readings. And the dominant theme of Christ's prayer is the glory of his Father. "Father, the hour has come, glorify your Son, so that your Son may glorify you... I have glorified you on earth, I have carried out the work that you entrusted to me. And now, Father, glorify me with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world existed". He then explains how he is glorified in his faithful disciples.
In the second reading, St. Peter exhorts us to share in Christ's sufferings so that we may rejoice and be glad. "when his glory shall be revealed". And a short time before, in that same epistle, he had exclaimed to him belong "all principality, power, might and dominion, and above every known name, not only in this world, but in the world to come."
Deo omnis gloria! "All glory to God!" So prays the great cry. But giving glory to God is easier said than understood. How can we "give" glory to God? We add nothing to his glory, and although our good deeds glorify him, our condemnation would also do so, showing his justice and righteousness in the face of our wickedness.
To give glory to God is to recognize that all glory belongs to him. "Glory." kabod in Hebrew, also suggests the holiness of God and has the idea of weight and substance. On the contrary, all created things are hebel, vapor, breath, mere vanity, as Ecclesiastes 1, 2 so dramatically expresses. Therefore, to give glory to God is to acknowledge him as the source of all power, being and goodness. While we are mere breath (God took dust and breathed life into it, the book of Genesis tells us about the creation of man), God is the only one who has substantial being. To give glory to God is to recognize and build our own existence on this reality; or, to use another related image, to make God the rock, the foundation of our lives.
If we build our lives on God, on what is substantial and not on what is breath, we will share his life and being, and therefore his glory, in heaven.
Prayer is the best way to glorify God because through it we recognise him as our power source. Thus the Church praying around Mary in today’s first reading is glorifying God and, not surprisingly, paves the way for the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, that great manifestation of divine glory to launch the Church’s life.
But we also want to glorify God in our daily work and life: "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." (1 Cor 10:31). Without being distracted from the activity at hand, to which we must dedicate all our concentration in order to do it well, we can also turn to God from time to time to help us carry out this task in a way that pleases him. In this way we work better and, little by little, we turn our work into prayer.
Homily on the readings of Sunday, Easter Sunday VII (A)
The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaA short one-minute reflection for these Sunday readings.
