These words spoke Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said,
Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son, that your Son also may glorify you:
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
1. Before these words, which we are now, with the Lord's help, to make the subject of discourse, Jesus had said, These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace; which we are to consider as referring, not to the later words uttered by Him immediately before, but to all that He had addressed to them, whether from the time that He began to account them disciples, or at least from the time after supper when He commenced this admirable and lengthened discourse. He gave them, indeed, such a reason for speaking to them, that either all He ever spoke to them may with the utmost propriety be referred to that end, or those especially, as His last words, which He now spoke when on the eve of dying for them, after that he who was to betray Him had quitted their company. For He gave this as the cause of His discourse, that in Him they might have peace, just as it is wholly on this account that we are Christians. For this peace will have no temporal end, but will itself be the e...
Our Lord, in the form of a servant, could have prayed in silence had He pleased; but Here membered that He had not only to pray, but to teach. For not only His discourse, but His prayer also, was for His disciples’ edification, yes and for ours who read the same. Father, the hour is come, shows that all time, and every thing that He did or suffered to be done, was atHis disposing, Who is not subject to time. Not that we must suppose that this hour came by any fatal necessity, but rather by God’s ordering. Away with the notion, that the stars could doom to death the Creator of the stars.
But if He was glorified by His Passion, how much more by His Resurrection? For His Passion rather showed His humility than His glory. So we must understand, Father, the hour is come, glorify Your Son, to mean, the hour is come for sowing the seed, humility; defer not the fruit, glory.
But itis justly asked, how the Son can glorify the Father, when the eternal glory of the Father never experienced abasem...
These things spoke Jesus, those things that He had said at the supper, partly sitting as far as the words, Arise, let us go hence; and thence standing, up to the end of the hymn which now commences, And lifted up His eyes and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify Your Son.
hese words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour is come: glorify Thy Song of Solomon , that Thy Son also may glorify Thee. These are the last words of Christ, when going to His Passion, and like the dying notes of the swan, are full of sweetness, love, and warmth. He teaches us (1.) when trouble is pressing on, to have recourse to prayer, and to ask God for strength to overcome it. (2.) That fathers both earthly and spiritual should, when going away or dying, commend their children to God in prayer. (3.) That preachers should study their discourses, so as to obtain both such power of speech as to move the hearts of their hearers, and so as to gain acceptance with them, that they may understand what they bear, and lovingly carry it out in their lives. "But no vain waste of words may have a place," says S. Cyril, xi14.
Lifted up His eyes.—To teach us, by using the same gesture, to lift up our heart to God.
Each word has its force. "Father." Christ pr...
CHAPTER III. That no man should consider that the Son has any lack of God-befitting glory, though He be found to say, Father, glorify Thy Son.
Having given His disciples a sufficiency of things necessary for salvation, and incited them by fitting words and arguments to a more accurate apprehension of His doctrines, and made them best able to battle against temptation, and confirmed the courage of each one, he straightway changes the form of His speech for our profit, and turns it into a kind of prayer, allowing no interval to elapse between His discourse to them and His prayer to God the Father; herein also by His own conduct suggesting to us a type of admirable life. For the man who aims at serving God ought, I think, to bear in mind that he ought at all events either to be fond of discoursing to his brethren of things profitable or necessary for their salvation, or, if he be not so engaged, to hasten to employ the service of the tongue in supplications to God, so as to render it i...
Glorify thy Son, by signs and miracles, lest dying so disgraceful a death, I seem to be no more than another man: that thy Son may glorify thee, that my death may make thee praised and glorified. (Witham)
He does not say that the day, or the time, but that the hour is come. An hour contains a portion of a day. What was this hour? He was now to be spit upon, scourged, crucified. But the Father glorifies the Son. The sun failed in his course, and with him all the other elements felt that death. The earth trembled under the weight of our Lord hanging on the Cross, and testified that it had not power to hold within it Him who was dying. The Centurion proclaimed, Truly this was the Son of God. The event answered the prediction. Our Lord had said, Glorify Your Son, testifying that He was not the Son in name only, but properly the Son. Your Son, He said. Many of us are sons of God; butnot such is the Son. For He is the proper, true Son by nature, not by adoption, in truth, not in name, by birth, not by creation. Therefore after His glorifying, to the manifestation of the truth there succeeded confession. The Centurion confesses Him to be the true Son of God, that so none of His believers might...
1. He that has done and taught, it says, the same shall be called great in the Kingdom of heaven. And with much reason; for to show true wisdom in words, is easy, but the proof which is by works is the part of some noble and great one. Wherefore also Christ, speaking of the endurance of evil, puts Himself forth, bidding us take example from Him. On this account too, after this admonition, He betakes Himself to prayer, teaching us in our temptations to leave all things, and flee to God. For because He had said, In the world you shall have tribulation, and had shaken their souls, by the prayer He raises them again. As yet they gave heed unto Him as to a man; and for their sake He acts thus, just as He did in the case of Lazarus, and there tells the reason; Because of the people that stand by I said it, that they might believe that You have sent Me. John 11:42 Yea, says some one, this took place with good cause in the case of the Jews; but wherefore in that of the disciples? With good c...
After having said, In the world you shall have tribulation, our Lord turns from admonition to prayer; thus teaching us in our tribulations to abandon all other things, and flee to God.
He lifted up His eyes to heaven to teach us intentness in our prayers: that we should stand with uplifted eyes, not of the body only, but of the mind.
He said, You have given Him power over all flesh, to show that His preaching extended not to the Jews only, but to the whole world. But what is all flesh? For all did not believe? So far as lay with Him, all did. If they did not attend to His words, it was not His fault who spoke, but theirs who did not receive.
He says, on the earth; for He had been glorified in heaven, both in respect of the glory of His own nature, and of the adoration of the Angels. The glory therefore here spoken of is not that which belongs to His substance, but that which pertains to the worship of man: wherefore it follows, I have finished the work which You gave Me to do.
Or, I ha...
Having encouraged the disciples to face bravely the coming tribulations, Christ raised their spirits again, this time by prayer. By praying, He teaches us that when temptations assail us we should put everything else aside and flee to God. However, one could say that Jesus was not actually praying, but rather conversing with the Father. Do not be surprised that it is said elsewhere that Jesus did pray, kneeling on the ground (see Mt. 26:39). For the Lord came, not only to reveal Himself to us, but to teach us every virtue by His own example, as a good instructor. Showing us that He goes willingly to His crucifixion, He says, Father, the hour is come. See how He longs for the Passion, and embraces it. He calls it His glory, and His Father’s glory, for indeed, by the Passion both were glorified. Before the crucifixion, He was practically unknown, even to the Jews: Israel does not know Me (Is. 1:3), He said. Afterwards, the whole world flocked to Him.
What exactly is the “glory” that b...
