Ask, and you shall receive. St John Chapter xvi. 24-28

St John Chapter xvi : Verses 24-28

Contents

• St John Chapter xvi : Verses 24-28 Douay-Rheims (Challoner) text, Greek (SBLG) & Latin text (Vulgate); 
• Annotations based on the Great Commentary of Cornelius A Lapide (1567-1637)

St John Chapter xvi : Verses 24-28

Ask, and you shall receive; that your joy may be full.
J-J Tissot. Brooklyn Museum.

24 Hitherto you have not asked any thing in my name. Ask, and you shall receive; that your joy may be full.  

25 These things I have spoken to you in proverbs. The hour cometh, when I will no more speak to you in proverbs, but will shew you plainly of the Father.

26 In that day you shall ask in my name; and I say not to you, that I will ask the Father for you:  

27 For the Father himself loveth you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.  

28 I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again I leave the world, and I go to the Father.

24 ἕως ἄρτι οὐκ ᾐτήσατε οὐδὲν ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου· αἰτεῖτε καὶ λήμψεσθε, ἵνα ἡ χαρὰ ὑμῶν ᾖ πεπληρωμένη.

24 Usque modo non petistis quidquam in nomine meo : petite, et accipietis, ut gaudium vestrum sit plenum.  

25 Ταῦτα ἐν παροιμίαις λελάληκα ὑμῖν· ⸀ἔρχεται ὥρα ὅτε οὐκέτι ἐν παροιμίαις λαλήσω ὑμῖν ἀλλὰ παρρησίᾳ περὶ τοῦ πατρὸς ⸀ἀπαγγελῶ ὑμῖν.

25 Haec in proverbiis locutus sum vobis. Venit hora cum jam non in proverbiis loquar vobis, sed palam de Patre annuntiabo vobis :

26 ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου αἰτήσεσθε, καὶ οὐ λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι ἐγὼ ἐρωτήσω τὸν πατέρα περὶ ὑμῶν·

26 in illo die in nomine meo petetis : et non dico vobis quia ego rogabo Patrem de vobis :  

27 αὐτὸς γὰρ ὁ πατὴρ φιλεῖ ὑμᾶς, ὅτι ὑμεῖς ἐμὲ πεφιλήκατε καὶ πεπιστεύκατε ὅτι ἐγὼ παρὰ τοῦ ⸀θεοῦ ἐξῆλθον.

27 ipse enim Pater amat vos, quia vos me amastis, et credidistis, quia ego a Deo exivi.  

28 ἐξῆλθον ⸀ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ ἐλήλυθα εἰς τὸν κόσμον· πάλιν ἀφίημι τὸν κόσμον καὶ πορεύομαι πρὸς τὸν πατέρα. 

28 Exivi a Patre, et veni in mundum : iterum relinquo mundum, et vado ad Patrem. 

Annotations

    24. Hitherto you have not asked any thing in my name.  Because ye have trusted in My presence, have asked all things of Me in person, and I have gained them from My Father. But now, as I am about to leave you, I refer you to My Father, that ye may obtain from him all that ye require, through the intervention of My Name. For though the Apostles cast out devils, &c., in Christ’s Name, yet they did so by asking help from Him who was present with them.

    Ask, and you shall receive. Because I have obtained this from the Father by My merits. Be not sorrowful at My departure, for He will give you greater things than I have ever given, if invoked in My Name. So Euthymius, Maldonatus, &c.

    that your joy may be full. (1.) S. Augustine (in loc.) explains thus, “Ask of God to comfort you in My absence, and to confer on you fulness of joy in eternal happiness.” (2.) S. Cyril. If ye ask of God, He will give you the fulness of joy, namely, remission of sins and plenteous grace. (3.) The word “that” signifies the effect and result of your prayers. Ye will rejoice at My Resurrection, but in order to perfect your joy, ask of the Father in My Name all the graces ye need, so that by obtaining them from the Father ye may have fulness of joy, and wish for nothing more in this life. So Ribera. Toletus, Jansenitis, and others. This is the true meaning.

    25. These things I have spoken to you in proverbs. The hour cometh, when I will no more speak to you in proverbs, but will shew you plainly of the Father. I said (Preface to Prov.) that a proverb, parable, and adage often meant the same thing, viz., some occult, obscure, and mysterious saying, though it does not contain a parable. This is the meaning here. What I have said about “a little while,” “the Holy Spirit,” “My departure to the Father,” “your joy,” &c., seems to you now obscure and enigmatical. But you will soon have full experience of them, both by My own teaching in the forty days, when I shall make known to you the meaning of Holy Scripture (Acts i. 3), and more fully by the Holy Spirit, whom I will send to you at Pentecost, to teach you clearly and distinctly the mysteries of the faith, and to inflame you with the love of them. So S. Augustine, Bede, Maldonatus, and others. S. Gregory (Moral. xxx. 5) refers this promise to the state of blessedness in heaven, for there it will be most abundantly fulfilled, when we shall see God face to face.

    26. In that day you shall ask in my name; and I say not to you, that I will ask the Father for you: I said (xiv.16), “I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter.” But now there will be no need of My praying, for I shall soon send the Holy Spirit, who will teach you to pray to God in My Name with such great earnestness, that the Father will grant you all things at your prayer, and therefore ye will not then need such prayers as I offered to God when present with you. Hence some Fathers think that Christ does not pray for us in Heaven with prayers, properly so called, but merely by presenting His wounds to the Father. (See Vasquez, par. iii., tome 1, Quæst. 21). But it is more probable that Christ does pray for us in heaven with prayers properly so called, as I have explained in Rom. viii. 24. Christ means that His earthly presence was not needed in order to pray for them as He used to do.

    27. For the Father himself loveth you, because you have loved me.  He first loveth us, in calling and urging us sinners to repentance and love of Him. And we then begin to love Him, and He then pours into us charity and justifying grace, making us His sons and friends. Hence it is clear that charity is the bond between God and man, for it causes us to love God, and God in turn to love us, as a friend loves a friend and is loved by him in return.

    and have believed that I came out from God: that is, that I am the Son of God, sent by Him into the world for your and others’ salvation. But you will say: “If God loves us, why does not He give of His own accord those things He knows we need, but wishes to be asked?” (1.) Because the reverend Majesty of God demands of us that we should reverence Him by our prayers, and testify that we need His bounty, and that no one can relieve our wants but Himself. We owe to Him the tribute of our prayers.

    (2.) The state of man requires us to acknowledge that we depend on Him, are fostered and protected by Him, and that in all things we need His aid and bounty. “Nay, let him openly confess,” says S. Augustine, “that he is God’s mendicant. Let him humble himself before Him, and with bended neck beg from Him what he needs.”

    (3.) The greatness of the thing asked for demands it. For we ask of God grace and glory, and there is nothing more excellent than these. God wishes us therefore to buy them by prayer, as it were by a price, that we may value them the more, and carefully preserve them. See S. Basil (Conat. Monast. chap. ii.)

    (4.) The utility and the excellence of prayer demands it. For therein we exercise, 1. Faith, in believing that God is Almighty, All-wise, and Most Good. 2. Hope, for we hope that He will give us all things necessary for this life and the next. 3. Love, whereby we as children ask all these things from a most loving Father. S. Chrysostom says thus on Ps. iv, “Prayer is no slight bond of our love towards God: for it accustoms ns to speak to Him, and leads us on to the study of wisdom. For if he who holds much converse with some great and wonderful man, gains thereby great benefit, how much more does he who holds perpetual converse with God?” For “prayer” (as he says elsewhere) “is a talking with God, which makes man a kind of familiar angel with God.” See his book “De orando Deum,” and Climacus (gradu xxviii), where he gives many excellent testimonies in favour of prayer, and adds, “Prayer is a kind of holy tyranny over God,” for it compels Him, as it were, to grant those things which are asked for.

    28. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again I leave the world, and I go to the Father. Again I leave the world and go to the Father. I came forth, not by birth of the Virgin, as Jansen maintains, but by My Eternal Generation from the Father. So say the Fathers. Listen to S. Augustine (in loc.), “He came forth from the Father, because He is of the Father, and He came into the world, because He showed to the world the Body which He took of the Virgin.” And Cyril, “To have come forth from the Father, is nothing else than to have been born, and to have shone forth from the Substance of the Father by that going forth by which He is, and is thus understood to be as in proper subsistence.” Euthymius, “I came forth from the Father, signifies that He is of the Substance of the Father, or by every right the Son of the Father.” So also Bede, S. Thomas, Lyranus, Ribera, Toletus, and others. This will be more clear from verse 30. And so, too, it is said “they came forth from the loins of their father” (Heb. 7:10; and Is. 39:7). To go forth from the Father is the same as being begotten of Him.

        

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The Vladimirskaya Icon. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.

 

 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.