At that day you shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you:
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Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
In that day ye shall ask in My Name; and I say not unto you that I shall pray the Father for you. I said (xiv16), "I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter." But now there will be no need of My praying, for I shall soon send the Holy Spirit, who will teach you to pray to God in My Name with such great earnestness, that the Father will grant you all things at your prayer, and therefore ye will not then need such prayers as I offered to God when present with you. Hence some Fathers think that Christ does not pray for us in Heaven with prayers, properly so called, but merely by presenting His wounds to the Father. (See Vasquez, par. iii. tome1 , Quæst21). But it is more probable that Christ does pray for us in heaven with prayers properly so called, as I have explained in Rom. viii24. Christ means that His earthly presence was not needed in order to pray for them as He used to do.
He suffers them not to ask for anything at all by prayer and supplication, except only in His Name. He promises, however, that His Father will very readily grant their requests, not indeed as induced thereto by the intercessions of the Son in His capacity as our Mediator and Advocate, but prompted by His own Will to be liberal in His dealings towards them, and making haste to shower upon those who love Christ the exceeding riches of His goodness, as though He were but paying them their due. And no man in his senses can think, nor can any one be so ignorant as to affirm, that the disciples or any others of the Saints stand in no need of the mediation of the Son in working out their own salvation. For all things proceed through Him from the Father in the Spirit, since He is the Advocate, as John saith, not for our sins only, but also for the whole world. And in saying this, He shows us too, to our profit, that very acceptable to God the Father is the honour and love which we have towards...
In that day . I say not to you that I will ask the Father for you, or shall need to ask the Father for you, though I am your Redeemer, your chief Advocate and Mediator, by dying for all the world.
For the Father himself loveth you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from God, sent to be your Redeemer.
I came forth from the Father, both as begotten of him from all eternity; and I also came into the world, as sent from him to become man, to become the Redeemer of the world, both as God and man. Now I am going, as man, to leave the world, and go to the Father, with whom I am, and have always been, as God. (Witham)
