Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
“I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.”
Today’s Gospel is a continuation of the Last Supper discourse in which Jesus asserts that neither He nor his disciples belong to the world. It is crucial to properly understand what our Lord means by this. The word “belong” relates to the possession or ownership of some thing. Jesus, while fully God, is at the same time fully human and like us in all things but sin. He certainly has a body and inhabits the world in the sense that He exists in physical time and space. But He does not belong to it. It does not possess Him. He is not dependent on it. Rather, it is dependent on Him.
Belonging to the world has a great deal to do with what a person has placed at the center of their life. A person who belongs to the world is possessed by it because they have decided that their highest good comes from material things, sensible pleasures, power, wealth, or recognition. A person who does not belong to the world is not dependent upon these things for their happiness or fulfillment. Only those who have chosen to make their relationship with God the source of their happiness can ever be truly free.