Journey Lesson 33 It Is Accomplished

By Marcel Gervais

This is lesson 33 of the Journey Bible Study Program series. The objective of this lesson is to describe the Church founded through the death and resurrection of Jesus. The first chapter describes the life of the Church and the duties of the members. In the next chapter we learn how Jesus creates unity in the Church. The Church is a society on earth, with a heavenly king, but a king who rules forever from the cross. In the Epilogne Jesus appears to his diciples and teaches the kind of leadership he expects from the leaders of the Church.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marcel Gervais
• Release date: Mar 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781927766361

Marcel Gervais

About the Author Archbishop Gervais was born in Elie Manitoba on September 21 1931. He is the ninth of fourteen children. His family came from Manitoba to the Sparta area near St. Thomas Ontario when he was just a teenager. He went to Sparta Continuation School and took his final year at Saint Joseph`s High School in St. Thomas. After high school he went to study for the priesthood at St. Peter’s Seminary in London , Ontario. He was ordained in 1958. He was sent to study in Rome. This was followed by studies at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. He returned to London to teach scripture to the seminarians at St. Peter’s Seminary. In 1974 he was asked by Bishop Emmett Carter to take over as director of the Divine Word International Centre of Religious Education. This Centre had been founded by Bishop Carter to provide a resource for adult education in the spirit of Vatican II. This Centre involved sessions of one or two weeks with many of the best scholars of the time. Students came not only from Canada and the United States but from all over the globe, Australia, Africa, Asia and Europe. By the time Father Gervais became the director Divine Word Centre was already a course dominated by the study of scripture to which he added social justice. This aspect of the course of studies was presented by people from every part of the “third world”; among which were Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez and Cardinal Dery of Ghana. In 1976 the Conference of Ontario Bishops along with the Canadian conference of Religious Women approached Father Gervais to provide a written course of studies in Sacred Scripture for the Church at large, but especially for priests and religious women. This is when Fr. Gervais began to write Journey, a set of forty lessons on the Bible. He was armed with a treasure of information from all the teachers and witnesses to the faith that had lectured at Devine Word. He was assisted by a large number of enthusiastic collaborators: all the people who had made presentations at Divine Word and provided materials and a team of great assistants, also at Divine Word Centre. The work was finished just as Father Gervais was ordained an auxiliary bishop of London (1980). He subsequently was made Bishop of Sault Saint Marie Diocese, and after four years, Archbishop of Ottawa (1989). He retired in 2007, and at the time of this writing, he is enjoying retirement.

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Journey- Lesson 33 It Is Accomplished

by Marcel Gervais, Emeritus Archbishop of the diocese of Ottawa, Canada

Nihil Obstat: Michael T. Ryan, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.

Imprimatur: + John M. Sherlock, Bishop of London

London, March 31, 1980

This content of this book was first published in 1977 as part of the JOURNEY Series By Guided Study Programs in the Catholic Faith and is now being republished in Smashwords by Emmaus Publications, 99 Fifth Avenue, Suite 103, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5P5, Canada ON Smashwords

Cover: ''Jesus rose from the table and took off his robe .. and began to wash disciple’s feet." John 13:4-5

COPYRIGHT © Guided Study Programs In the Catholic Faith, a division of The Divine Word International Centre of Religious Education 1977. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited.

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Contents

Chapter 1 The Farewell Discourses (13:1 - 17:26)

Chapter 2 The Death and Resurrection of Jesus (18:1- 21:25)

Epilogue

Answer key to practice questions

Self-test

Answer key to self-test

Recommendations for group meeting on Lesson Thirty-three

About The Author

Psalm 122

A pilgrim, standing at the gates of Jerusalem, recalls the joy he experienced when he first set out for the Holy City. He praises her, because she draws all the Tribes together and unites them in giving thanks to the Lord. Jerusalem is both the dwelling-place of God (vs 9) and the centre of all the courts of justice in the land (vs 5). The psalmist accepts all the members of God's People as his brothers and friends. He prays for the peace and well-being which should mark the com munity in which the Lord lives (vs 9).

The prayer of the psalmist is like that of Jesus as he spends his last hours with his disciples (John 13-17). They are his friends, his beloved, the first members of his People, the new Jerusalem. He prays for unity among them and all future members of his Church; he promises to remain united to them forever. He commands his Church to live not by strict justice but by the love and forgiveness he brought her. He bestows his peace upon her and prays that she may enter into the fullness of his own joy.

Lesson Objective: To describe the Church founded through the death and resurrection of Jesus (John 13:1 -21:25).

In the Book of Glory (Chs 13-20), Saint John shares with us his most sublime insights. The Eagle* soars to great heights and he uses the best of his literary powers to share with us the magnificence of what he sees. And so it should be, for he is describing the "hour of the Lord's glory". To our surprise the vision he imparts is not only of the dying and rising of the Son of Man but of that for which he died and rose, that is, the Church. And what he describes is not the glory of the Church in heaven, but the splendour of the Church on earth. The new People of God is on the evangelist's mind throughout these chapters. Even his description of the death of Jesus is surrounded by rich symbols of the Church which is being born at that moment: the seamless robe of Jesus; Mary ice mother of Jesus; the disciple Jesus loved. The blood and water which flow from Christ's side are symbols of the Spirit who bestows divine life through the two greatest sacraments of the Church, Baptism and the Eucharist. So too, when John writes of the resurrection, he shows us the Risen Lord breathing his own Spirit on his Church: the Spirit of Love who imparts to her the power to forgive sins; the Spirit of Truth who enables her to profess her faith in Jesus as her Lord and her God.

If it is the Church he has in view when he describes the "hour of Jesus (Chs 18-20), it is even more clearly the Church he has in mind in the Farewell Discourses (Chs 13-17). In these chapters Saint John draws us into the circle of friends, the circle of Jesus and his beloved. Alone with those who are the Father's gift to him, Jesus quietly assures them of the greatness, the dignity that is theirs as his People. As we reflect on his warm and gentle words we become increasingly aware of the amazing confidence Jesus places in his Church, and as we come to realize this, we are overwhelmed at the extravagance of his love for her. It truly does appear extravagant. His affection, his trust seem excessive: while we know that all the disciples except Judas will prove faithful in the end, we also know that one will deny him, and all but one will abandon him at the hour of his death, and some will doubt that he has been raised from the dead. But the frailty of his followers does not in any way diminish the love he has for them. On the contrary, their weakness calls forth from him greater and greater assurances that he will not abandon them, never leave them orphans".

*Since the first centuries of our era, certain symbols have been given to the four evangelists: a man for Matthew; a lion for Mark; an ox (or bull) for Luke, and an eagle for John. These are taken from the Book of Revelation 4:6-8 (see also Ezek 1:5-10).

As we can see, these final chapters are closely tied together by one theme, the Church. The first five (13-17) provide a commentary on the rest (18-21). Though the last chapter (21) is probe ably the work of a disciple of Saint John (Lesson 31, pp. 4-5), it nevertheless forms an integral part of the whole. It supplies a necessary instruction on leadership in the Church, one which is in complete harmony with the rest of the Gospel.

Chapter 1The Farewell Discourses*(John 13:1 -17:26)

Section Objective: To describe the life of the Church and the duties of her members as taught in John 13 to 17.

Throughout these pages Saint John describes the Church by evoking the main teachings of the Old Testament on the People of God. As God chose Israel as his own People, saved them out of Egypt by a mighty deed, bound them to himself in the Covenant, gave them his commandments and promised them many blessings, so Jesus chooses the members of the New People, saves them by his death and resurrection, unites them to himself in the eternal Covenant, gives them his commandments, and lavishes his blessings upon them. We will now consider these ideas under the three headings of Election, Salvation and Covenant.

Election: God chose Israel to be his own People. He took the initiative. It was not for any merit on their part that he "elected" them from among the nations; he chose them out of love, and love cannot be explained (Deut 7:7ff). Jesus chooses the members of the New People (John 15:16) not for any greatness or special holiness they possess, but simply out of love.

God chose Israel to be a priestly nation, that is, not for its own sake, but to serve the good of all peoples (Exod 19:3-8, Lesson 5, pp. 3-6). Similarly, Jesus chooses the New People for the sake of the whole world (17:22; see 3:16).

Salvation: God saved his People from slavery in Egypt