Wednesday, May 20, 2026
Wednesday of the Seventh week of Easter
John 17:11-19
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
Acts 20:28-38
Take heed, therefore, to yourselves, and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the assembly of the Lord and God which he purchased with his own blood. For I know that after my departure, vicious wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Men will arise from among your own selves, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore watch, remembering that for a period of three years I didn’t cease to admonish everyone night and day with tears. Now, brothers, I entrust you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build up, and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I coveted no one’s silver, or gold, or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands served my necessities, and those who were with me. In all things I gave you an example, that so laboring you ought to help the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” When he had spoken these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. They all wept a lot, and fell on Paul’s neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all because of the word which he had spoken, that they should see his face no more. And they accompanied him to the ship.
Gospel
John 17:11-19
I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them through your name which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name. Those whom you have given me I have kept. None of them is lost, except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I come to you, and I say these things in the world, that they may have my joy made full in themselves. I have given them your word. The world hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that you would take them from the world, but that you would keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, even so I have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.
Lectio
Both readings today are spoken on the threshold of departure. Paul kneels on the shore at Miletus, knowing he will not see these faces again, entrusting his beloved community to God and to the word of his grace. Jesus, on the night before he dies, lifts his eyes to the Father and entrusts those given to him: "Keep them through your name." There is something almost unbearably tender in these farewells — the way love, when it can no longer protect by its presence, hands the beloved over to Someone greater. Both Paul and Jesus weep, or move others to weeping, and neither pretends the wolves and the hatred of the world are not real. Yet their final gesture is not anxiety but consignment: I cannot stay, so I give you back to God.
Notice that Jesus does not ask the Father to take his friends out of the world, only to keep them from the evil one. This is not a faith that escapes; it is a faith that is sent. "As you sent me into the world, even so I have sent them." Paul, too, points not to his protection but to his example — hands that labored, a heart that coveted nothing, a life that proved it is more blessed to give than to receive. Sanctification, in both readings, is not a withdrawal into safety but a being set apart for love in the very midst of the world's danger. We are kept not by being removed, but by being held in the Father's name while we labor on.
Perhaps this is what we are asked to learn in these last days of Easter: how to love something we cannot ultimately secure, and to release it into hands more faithful than our own. The people we shepherd, the work we have built, the faith we hope to pass on — all of it must eventually be entrusted, with tears, to God and to the word of his grace.
Who in your life have you been trying to protect by your own presence and vigilance, when Christ may be inviting you, like Paul on that shore, to kneel down and entrust them to God instead?
Where have you quietly asked to be taken *out* of a hard or hostile situation, when Jesus is actually praying that you be kept faithful *within* it — and what would it change in you today to accept being sent rather than spared?
Saint of the day
St. Bernardine of Siena, Priest (1380-1444)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora