NOTES for Joh 17:1-5
Reading today's passage from the Gospel of John, one wants, following Pilate and his question "What is truth?" (John 18:38), to ask: what is eternal life?
And indeed, it is hard to count the people who have ever been occupied by this question. Only God, who knows even the number of stars in the sky, can do that. And in answer to this question Jesus will answer us today with the words: "And this is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent" (John 17:3).
He may not say them directly to us, but we can hear them, like Jesus' disciples, in His conversation with the Father. Through the Holy Spirit, people are shown the Lord's desire that every person come to Him and enter into a relationship of love with Him. And in these very words one can see that this desire fills the Trinity: the desire that every person "know" the true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent.