An Excerpt from the Holy Father's new book.
"Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week -- From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection,"
"Sanctify them in the truth . . . ”
As a second theme, I should like to explore the idea of sanctification and sanctifying, which points strongly toward the connection with the event of atonement and with the high priesthood.
In the prayer for the disciples, Jesus says: "Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth .... For their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth" (]n I7:17, I9). Let us also cite a passage from the controversy discourses that belongs in this context: here Jesus designates himself as the one sanctified and sent into the world by the Father (cf. 10:36). Hence we are dealing with a triple "sanctification": the Father has sanctified the Son and sent him into the world; the Son sanctifies
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himself; and he asks, on the basis of his own sanctification, that the disciples be sanctified in the truth.
What does it mean to "sanctify"? According to biblical understanding, sanctity or "holiness" in the fullest sense is attributable only to God. Holiness expresses his particular way of being, divine being as such. So the word "sanctify" (qadoš is the word for "holy" in the Hebrew Bible) means handing over a reality-a person or even a thing-to God, especially through appropriation for worship. This can take the form of consecration for sacrifice (cf. Ex 13:2; Deut 15:19); or, on the other hand, it can mean priestly consecration (cf. Ex 28:41), the designation of a man for God and for divine worship.
The process of consecration, "sanctification", includes two apparently opposed, but in reality deeply conjoined, aspects. On the one hand, "consecrating" as "sanctifying" means setting apart from the rest of reality that pertains to man's ordinary everyday life. Something that is consecrated is raised into a new sphere that is no longer under human control. But this setting apart also includes the essential dynamic of "existing for". Precisely because it is entirely given over to God, this reality is now there for the world, for men, it speaks for them and exists for their healing. We may also say: setting apart and mission form a single whole.
The connection between the two can be seen very clearly if we consider the special vocation of Israel: on the one hand, it is set apart from all other peoples, but for a particular reason-in order to carry out a commission for all peoples, for the whole world. That is what is meant when Israel is designated a "holy people".
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Let us return to John's Gospel. What is the meaning of the three sanctifications (consecrations) that are spoken of there? First we are told that the Father sent his Son into the world and consecrated him (cf. 10:36). What does that mean? The exegetes suggest a certain parallel between this expression and the call of the Prophet Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations" (Jer 1:5)· Consecration means that God is exercising a total claim over this man, "setting him apart" for himself, yet at the same time sending him out for the nations.
In Jesus' words, too, consecration and mission are directly linked. Thus one may say that this consecration of Jesus by the Father is identical with the Incarnation: it expresses both total unity with the Father and total existence for the world. Jesus belongs entirely to God, and that is what makes him entirely "for all". "You are the Holy One of God", Peter said to him in the synagogue at Capernaum, and these words constitute a comprehensive Christological confession (Jn 6:69)·
Once the Father has "consecrated" him, though, what is meant when he goes on to say "I consecrate (hagiázõ) myself" (17: 19)? Rudolf Bultmann gives a convincing answer to this question in his commentary on John's Gospel. "Hagiázõ, put here in the farewell prayer at the beginning of the Passion, and used together with hypèr autõn (for them), means 'to make holy' in the sense of 'to consecrate for the sacrifice' "; Bultmann quotes in support a saying of Saint John Chrysostom: "I sanctify myself-I
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present myself as a sacrifice" (The Gospel of John, p. 510, n. 5; cf. also Feuillet, The Priesthood of Christ and His Ministers, pp. 35 and 44). If the first "sanctification" is related to the Incarnation, here (‘the second sanctification’, Edit) the focus is on the Passion as sacrifice.
Bultmann has presented the inner connection between the two "sanctifications" very beautifully. The holiness that Jesus received from the Father is his "being for the world", or "being for his own". His holiness is "no static difference in substance from the world, but is something Jesus achieves only by completing the stand he has made for God and against the world. But this completion means sacrifice. In the sacrifice he is, in the manner of God, so against the world that he is at the same time for it" (The Gospel of John, p. 5II). In this passage, one may object to the sharp distinction between substantial being and completion of the sacrifice: Jesus' "substantial" being is as such the entire dynamic of "being for"; the two are inseparable. But perhaps Bultmann meant this as well. He should, moreover, be given credit when he says of John ITJ9 that "there is no disputing the allusion to the words of the Lord's supper" (ibid., p. 5IO n. 5).
Thus, in these few words, we see before us the new atonement liturgy of Jesus Christ, the liturgy of the New Covenant, in its entire grandeur and purity. Jesus himself is the priest sent into the world by the Father; he himself is the sacrifice that is made present in the Eucharist of all times. Somehow Philo of Alexandria had correctly anticipated this when he spoke of the Logos as priest and high priest (Leg. All. III, 82; De Somn. I, 215; II, 183; reference
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found in Bultmann, ibid.). The meaning of the Day of Atonement is completely fulfilled in the "Word" that was made flesh "for the life of the world" (Jn 6:51).
Let us turn to the third sanctification that is spoken of in Jesus' prayer: "Sanctify them in the truth" (IT17). "I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth" (17:19). The disciples are to be drawn into Jesus' sanctification; they too are included in this reappropriation into God's sphere and the ensuing mission for the world. "I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth": their being given over to God, their "consecration", is tied to the consecration of Jesus Christ; it is a participation in his state of sanctification.
Between verses I7 and I9, which speak of the consecration of the disciples, there is a small but important difference. Verse I9 says that they are to be consecrated "in truth": not just ritually, but truly, in their whole being this is doubtless how it should be translated. Verse 17, on the other hand, reads: "sanctify them in the truth". Here the truth is designated as the force of sanctification, as "their consecration".
According to the Book of Exodus, the priestly consecration of the sons of Aaron is accomplished when they are vested in sacred robes and anointed (29:1-9); the ritual of the Day of Atonement also speaks of a complete bath before the investiture with sacred robes (Lev I6:4)· The disciples of Jesus are sanctified, consecrated "in the truth". The truth is the bath that purifies them; the truth is the robe and the anointing they need.
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This purifying and sanctifying "truth" is ultimately Christ himself They must be immersed in him; they must, so to speak, be "newly robed" in him, and thus they come to share in his consecration, in his priestly commission, in his sacrifice.
Judaism, likewise, after the demise of the Temple, had to discover a new meaning for the cultic prescriptions. It now saw "sanctification" in the fulfillment of the commandments-in being immersed in God's holy word and in God's will expressed therein (cf Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to Saint John III, pp. 18Sf).
In the Christian faith, Jesus is the Torah in person, and hence consecration takes place through union of will and union of being with him. If the disciples' sanctification in the truth is ultimately about sharing in Jesus' priestly mission, then we may recognize in these words of John's Gospel the institution of the priesthood of the Apostles, the institution of the New Testament priesthood, which at the deepest level is service to the truth.
