St. Francis of Assisi wrote his last will and testament shortly before he died. In it he summarized his life very briefly and spoke of the gift that God had given him; namely, his brothers and sisters in the way of penance that had claimed the latter part of his life. Then he indicated what he wanted his brothers and sisters to do after he was gone. We were to live as he had done and to follow the Rule he had written “without gloss or interpretation.”
St. Francis followed other great figures in history in writing his last will and testament. In our modern culture, wills are usually the vehicles through which people disperse the material things that they have accumulated in life. However, great men and women in history were more intent on giving their followers a path on which they were to walk through life.
The Scriptures hold many such “final addresses.” Some of them are short. Others, like the final address of Jesus in the Gospel of St. John, are quite lengthy. The final days of the Easter Season ask us to reflect on the final words of Jesus to his disciples before his passion and death.
The passage that we read in today’s Gospel is similar to that of St. Francis of Assisi in that it briefly summarizes what the life of Jesus was all about. Jesus came to be with us to glorify the Father and to share that which he had received from the Father with his disciples. He rightfully claims that he has done everything that the Father has asked of him. Then he prays for his disciples so that they will cherish the words and the deeds that he has given them and be able to live in the world while holding on to these principles. Again, St. Francis did much the same thing for his followers. So one could almost get the idea that St. Francis got the idea for his final will and testament from the Gospel of St. John. Indeed, while he lay dying, it is just this Gospel that he asked to have read to him.
As we pray over this last wish of Jesus today, it would be a good idea to ask ourselves how we continue to share the words and deeds of the Father with the world. So much of our attention these days is taken up with our concern over the COVID 19 virus. Perhaps we could use this particular moment in history as our focus on how we are living out the last will and testament of Jesus as written in the Gospel of St. John.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator