Reading and meditation on the Word of God on Thursday of the 7th week of Easter, June 5, 2025, Memorial of Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr

Delivered by Gladys from the Parish of Saint Gabriel in the Diocese of Bandung, Indonesia. Acts of the Apostles 22: 30; 23: 6-11; Rs psalm 16: 1-2a.5.7-8.9-10.11; Yohanes 17: 20-26.MAY THEY BECOME ONE The title for our meditation today is:May They Become One. This sentence comes from Jesus Himself, that is when Heprayed for the apostles, the disciples and all of His followers, at the momentof the last supper. The focus of a prayer of this type continues to inspire allour prayers with the intentions for communion and unity among us. This communion is the fundamentalnature of God's being and existence, namely the Trinity. Based on this, Jesusthen prayed that all of his followers will finally arrive at this goal. Butthere is one simple question as it goes: why does Jesus not reveal: “They mustbecome one”, but instead he says: “May they become one”? The most obvious reason is that Godgives freedom to every human person to choose communion or division anddisintegration. This is the same as the human freedom to choose to obey God ordisobey Him. In this world the battle field and struggle of life will determinewhether one really follows God or otherwise chooses another path to oppose Him.Every human being is blessed with freedom and intelligence to choose the pathto salvation. Another reason that we may not realizeis that preparation is always an important element in the pilgrimage of ourfaith in the world. The prayer of Jesus that we may unite in the world is anencouragement, therefore, we can prepare a strong and dignified unity as sonsand daughters of God. This preparation is like an increase of our passion tolong for eternal communion in heaven. Therefore to each one of us: neitherignore nor play and underestimate any kind of unity of God's children in theworld and rather think only the future communion in heaven. God does not pleasewith this type of belief. The next reason that maybe the highestone is that God is the only one God, and He dwells forever in heaven. To getthere we have to go through a long journey and process. There is no magic gameor highly-expressed transportation to get there. If there is no need of aprocess, then we need only one miracle to bring all of us together to heaven.This is not the way of God. God allows us to follow the process, and so we usethe prayer "May we become one". In all our efforts, we humans hopethat we can achieve the goal of communion with God. God does not want toeliminate the element of hope in us by using the word “must”. Hope is veryimportant for us humans. All our prayers clearly use the words "hopefully"or "may" and "will" or "later", because it is aconcrete sign of our hope.Let's pray. In the name of theFather ... O God Almighty, unity in You is our ultimate hope, may the HolySpirit sent by Your Son Jesus Christ unite us in this world in all our ways andsituations as our preparation to enjoy eternal communion in heaven. Hail Maryfull of grace ... In the name of the Father ...