Our gospel text for the 6th Sunday of Easter comes from a section of the “Farewell Discourse” that focuses on Jesus’ departure and discusses the disciples’ relation to Jesus and their conflict with the world. Our gospel pericope falls at the end of this section.

Our gospel drops us onto the end of an ongoing conversation. We need to “catch up” on the conversation that occurred  before the events of Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. Judas the traitor has left the Last Supper, or as St. John describes it: has left the light (13:1). Jesus then turns to his closest disciples, those who have followed him for about three years. Various disciples — Peter, Thomas, Philip, Judas (not Iscariot, possibly Thaddeus) — carry the discussion forward by the questions they pose. This enables us to break down the whole conversation, hopefully to see it in content and more clearly, by dividing it according to the characters who ask the leading questions. (Neal Flannigan, John, The Collegeville Bible Commentary)

Here is the beginning of the “Farewell Discourse”:

When he had left, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. (If God is glorified in him,) God will also glorify him in himself, and he will glorify him at once. My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. You will look for me, and as I told the Jews, ‘Where I go you cannot come,’ so now I say it to you. I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:31-35)

Judas depart has initiated “the hours” of which Jesus often spoke. The events of the Passion are in motion. These verses form a type of prologue delivering key messages from Jesus to his disciples: (a) my time has come, (b) I am leaving,  and (c) going forward there is a new commandment. Of course, the words will shock the disciples – I suspect that in the midst of the message “Now is the Son of Man glorified…” and “ new commandment; love one another…” all that was lost when they heard “I will be with you only a little while longer…Where I go you cannot come.

Image credit: Christ’s Final Address to the Apostles | Bona Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1380 | from the Maesta Altar | Siena, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo | PD-US