Seventh Sunday of Easter – Barbara Barry, SNDdeN June 1, 2025 John 17:20-26 We have come to the last week of the Easter season. It has been a memorable one. While we have mourned the death of Pope Francis, we have also celebrated and are grateful for all that his words and actions have done for the church and the world community. Particularly, this experience of the conclave has been influenced by the extended internationality of the community of cardinals and by the atmosphere of synodality that is growing in the church. We also look forward in hope to all that Pope Leo XIV will inspire in us. He, too, has a focus on the poor and marginalized and a need for peace. It is quite possible that both of these popes have been influenced by today’s gospel from John. Of course, we know that no one was taking down Jesus’ words that night and we can assume that the apostles were so distracted with what was happening that they weren’t trying to remember what they heard Jesus praying but somehow the oral tradition of the early church recalls this intimate prayer of Jesus with his Abba. In Jesus’ last […]