John 17:5 — Community Reflections

JOHN 17:5 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”

So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory I had with you before the world existed — Jesus requests return to his pre-incarnate glory with the Father, an appeal grounded in pre-existence theology (1:1-2, 8:58). The "glory" (doxa) he possessed before time itself began belongs to his divine nature; the incarnation constituted a temporary humiliation. This petition reveals Jesus' understanding that exaltation through the cross restores rather than grants glory, affirming his identity as the eternal Logos.

Church Fathers on John 17:5

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.
Chrysostom · 4th century

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.
Bede · 8th century

Our Lord, in the form of a servant, could have prayed in silence had He pleased; but He remembered 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 at His disposing, Who is not subject to time. Not that we must suppose that this hour came by any fatal…
Augustine · 4th century

Read all 28 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

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