The Farewell Discourses In The Gospel Of John

In the fourth Gospel, as the Gospel of John is usually known, a long prayer follows the farewell discourses. This prayer is also usually designated as the "high priestly prayer" of Jesus. John surrounds this prayer of several chapters, which describe Jesus’ preparation to His way to the Cross. John affirms that this preparation begins by the footwashing, which shows the disciples the ministry of servanthood Jesus expected from them (Jn 13: 1 – 20). Then, in the first farewell discourse, Jesus gives His new commandment of love (13: 31 – 38). After that, John depicts the promised of the Holy Spirit (14: 15 – 24). Likewise, in the second and third discourses, John shows Jesus’ teachings (15; 16). Now, in Chapter 17, after having prepared the
31 - 33). They are linked because of the same positive tone by which they are delivered and because of the same order by which both passages are developed. In both cases, the main characters are preparing themselves to die and leaving their communities in God’s hands. However, they differ in that Moses was preparing to die but said, "Blessed are you, O Israel, who is like you, O victorious people? Yahweh is the shield that protects you and the sword that leads you to triumph. Your enemies will try to corrupt you, but you yourself will trample on their backs” (Deut. 33:29). Jesus, on the other hand, refers to Yahweh as Abba. He says, “Father, the hour has come: glorify your Son so that your Son may glorify you; so that, just as you have given Him power over all humanity, he may give eternal life to all those you have entrusted to Him” (Jn 17: 1 – 2).
With a simple introduction, “when Jesus has spoken these words he lifted up His eyes to heaven and said…,” John highlights the beginning the end of the farewell discourses and the beginning of Jesus’ prayer. John affirms that Jesus adopts a prayerful attitude, “Jesus raised His eyes to heaven,” where God is (17: 1). It is known that within the Jewish tradition, raising the eyes to Heaven was a habitual posture not to pray oriented toward any particular point geographically but turned
The fourth Gospel displays how Jesus began His intercessory function by saying, “the hour has come” and “glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you” (17: 1b). The reference to the arrival of the “hour” has a deep connection with the beginning of the Last Supper (13: 1). There is no doubt that both pericopes are making reference to the same “hour.” That hour is not a chronological entity that can be measured with a clock. The term “hour” indicates rather the salvific event of the death and resurrection of Jesus. For John, the transcendental element is the respective contents of the ‘hour.” That content determines, in each case, what happens to Jesus Himself. It is His death as saving death, like the death of the Son of God and Son of Man, which makes the “hour” what it really is: the hour of salvation for all humanity. Thus, the “hour” also designates the entrance to the eschatological αἰών (aiṓn), and therefore the permanent presence of