Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Seventh Sunday of Easter

Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And for their sakes, I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth. (John 17:11b–19)

Those then, He says, who have received Your Word, O Father, through Me, show forth My Likeness in themselves and are conformed to the pattern of Your own Son, who, like Him, pass unscathed through the ocean of the world’s wickedness, and have shown themselves foreigners and strangers to the love of pleasure in this life, and every kind of vice. Therefore sanctify them in Your truth, for exceeding purity is inherent in Christ. For He is truly God, and cannot be subject to sin nor endure it, but is rather the fountain of all goodness, and the beauty of holiness. For the Divine Nature, that rules over all, can do nothing but what is in truth suitable and belongs thereto. And the holy disciples, I mean all who believe on Him, cannot otherwise exhibit purity unspotted by the wickedness of this world than by means of forgiveness and grace from above, which puts away the defilement of previous offenses and the accusing sins of their past lives; and, further, conferring on them the glory of a life of sanctification, though their continuance therein is not free from conflict, as Paul wisely teaches us, saying: Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. For our life is cast upon the deep, and we are tossed by several storms, as the devil tempts without ceasing, and continually assails and strives to defile if he can, by the insidious inventions of malice, even those who have been already made pure. For his meat is well-chosen, as the prophet says. Having then borne witness to His disciples that their life was out of the world, and that they were conformed to the likeness of His own essential purity, He proceeds to pray to His Father to keep them.

Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of John 11.9