The Hour of Glory

Every person needs to learn how to tell time. As much as we might not like it sometimes, our world is governed by time – learning how to be on time, learning how to make good use of time, and especially learning how to tell what time it actually is. Every person has to learn these things, and so we help children master that skill. I’m sure many of us have helped children look at an analog clock to understand how the two hands pointing at two different numbers tells us something important. Perhaps some of us even recall being children and doing the same with our parents or grandparents. 

In the Gospel today, Jesus is helping his disciples learn how to tell time. Not the kind of time I’ve been referring to, displayed on our clocks and watches and phones. He’s helping them learn how to tell time in a deeper, more supernatural way – to tell time spiritually. Time plays an important role in the Gospel of John. St. John the Evangelist often refers in his account to the time of day that different events happen, and Jesus continuously talks about his “hour” – “my hour has not yet come” (Jn 2:4, 7:8); “the hour is coming and is now here” (Jn 5:25, 16:32). Jesus is not referring to the hours that our clocks keep track of but rather the spiritual moment of when his divine mission will reach its fulfillment. Jesus wants his disciples to be attentive to the coming of his “hour,” the unveiling of God’s decisive action in the world.

Today’s Gospel is situated right as that hour is about to commence: “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him.” As we heard, Judas has left the Last Supper banquet and will soon return with guards and soldiers to betray and arrest Jesus. And thus, as Jesus says, the sequence of events has now been set in motion, all of the events of his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The die has been cast, as they say. But it’s interesting, isn’t it, that Jesus refers to glory? We would understand if Jesus said, “Now will the Son of Man suffer and die, and in him God will show his love.” But Jesus says that this “hour,” long awaited and now finally arrived, is the hour of his glory. Can there be glory in betrayal and suffering? Can there be glory in death?

Who Among Us (2009) by Debra Hurd

The answer is yes. We know even in our human experience: if someone lays down their life for something worthy, for a noble cause, we see there is a kind of glory in that. All the more so when the one laying down his life is the Son of God! Jesus goes to the Cross not out of weakness or defeat but out of love for humanity, to effect our redemption. And because he does so, because God wants to reveal in Christ the true power of his love, he also raises him to new life. That is what the “hour” of Jesus is all about: to initiate a new time in the world, when all will come to see God’s redemptive love and the glory of his victory, even over the most terrible forces of our human experience. The love of Christ conquers all.

As Jesus faces his coming “hour” – an hour of both suffering and of glory – he turns his attention to his disciples. He gives them a new commandment: to love one another as he has loved them. As he enters into his redemptive work, Jesus gives his disciples a way of participating in that Cross, to suffer in a sense along with him in order to share in his triumph and glory. Love becomes for the followers of Jesus not just a nice sentiment or ideal but a means of participating in Christ’s redemption. When we love with the love of Christ – a love that in freedom does not shy away from being sacrificial, a love that is willing to deny ourselves for the good of the other – then we also share in the accomplishment of God’s plan to emancipate the world from slavery to sin and death. We can each become coworkers with Christ in unveiling the power and glory of God, helping to "make all things new" (Rev 21:5a).

To do this, we have to be able to tell time – that is, to read the times and understand them with the mind of Christ. We must look at our lives as governed not so much by the days and hours and minutes of the world, or even of our individual calendars and schedules, but above all by the love of Jesus. Each day we have opportunities offered to us here and now to share in the joys, the sufferings, the sacrifices, and the sanctifications that help to further the power and purpose of God in the world. Just like the early Christians, as we heard in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we can be the messengers of God’s Good News and the instruments of his redemptive action. Sometimes, his plan calls for us to undergo “many hardships,” as Paul says, in order for the love of Christ to be made manifest. But if we stay rooted in Christ, if we obey the Lord’s commandment to love as he loved – especially when it is not convenient or easy or popular to do so, even if it is sacrificial and self-denying – then we contribute to the coming of the Lord's kingdom where we hope to share in his glory.

Friends, the “hour” of Jesus, the hour of glory, which began two millennia ago according to the world’s time, is just as spiritually new and present and urgent today. What the Lord began with his Passion, Death, and Resurrection continues still for us, if we learn from him what is of greatest importance. Just as we teach our young ones how to understand the things of this world, may his words teach us today how to understand the commandment of the world to come: “My children… this is how all will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”