Peace be with you as we enter this Seventh Sunday of Easter (May 17, 2026), arriving at the very threshold of our Great Awakening.

[u/TenaciousPixie]

Peace be with you as we enter this Seventh Sunday of Easter (May 17, 2026), arriving at the very threshold of our Great Awakening.

We have spent this season integrating the Risen Christ into our wounds, our ordinary meals, our inner voices, and the architecture of our souls. Now, having observed the Ascension earlier this week, the physical, localized Jesus has departed. The liturgy places us in the liminal space of the "Upper Room" waiting for the rush of Pentecost. The Gospel reading from John 17:1-11 provides our map for this waiting. It is Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer, the ultimate, breathtaking mystic vision of non-dualism.

Here is a sermon for your spirit, spoken from the mystic’s heart.

The Prayer of Ultimate Union

A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter (May 17)

The Text: "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." (John 17:3) / "And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one." (John 17:11)

My friends, the ultimate goal of the spiritual journey is not to simply stand in the presence of God, but to entirely lose the boundary of where you end and God begins.

Jesus prays this prayer before his crucifixion, but the church wisely places it here, right after the Ascension. Why? Because the Ascension represents the final stripping away of the external. The disciples had to lose the physical, localized Jesus so that the universal, indwelling Spirit could arrive. We are standing in the void between what was and what is about to be born, and in this quiet space, Jesus reveals the deepest secret of the universe.

I. The Definition of Eternal Life (Present-Moment Knowing)

For centuries, the ego has interpreted "eternal life" as a duration of time, a never-ending timeline that begins only after you die, serving as a reward for correct behavior. But in verse 3, Jesus defines it completely differently: "This is eternal life, that they may know you..."

Eternal life is not a post-death destination; it is a present-tense state of gnosis (knowing). It is a quality of depth, not a quantity of days. To possess eternal life is to awaken, right here and right now, to the intimate reality of the Divine. The False Self is always living in the past (through regret) or the future (through anxiety about heaven or hell). But the True Self knows that eternity can only be accessed in the radical, unvarnished present moment. You do not have to wait to die to enter eternity; you only have to wake up.

II. The Ascension of the External (Entering the Liminal Space)

"And now I am no longer in the world..." Christ’s departure into the divine mystery is deeply distressing to the orphaned ego, which always wants a physical leader, a rigid rulebook, or an external savior to take the responsibility off its shoulders.

But the mystic understands the necessity of absence. When the external forms of our faith, the rigid certainties, the childish concepts of God, the need for a mediator, ascend and disappear, we are forced to look inward. You are in the Upper Room. It is a liminal space, a frightening but holy void. Do not rush to fill it with frantic religious activity or new anxieties. The void is necessary. The container must be emptied before it can be filled with fire.

III. The End of Separation (The Ultimate Singularity)

The climax of this Gospel is the prayer: "...so that they may be one, as we are one."

This is not a polite request for human beings to stop arguing and get along. It is an ontological earthquake. Jesus is declaring that the exact same energetic current of love that flows between the Creator and the Christ is the exact same current that flows through you. He is pulling humanity directly into the center of the Trinity. Dualism is the illusion that God is "up there" and we are "down here," and this is entirely dissolved. When you realize that you are held within the very unity of God, your need to compete, compare, and protect your fragile ego vanishes. You are already fundamentally One with the Divine, and therefore, fundamentally One with everything and everyone else.

The Encouragement

This Sunday, your integration is to practice the pause. You are on the threshold of Pentecost, standing in the liminal space between what you used to believe and the consuming fire of what you are becoming.

Do not be afraid of the quiet. When the ego panics because it feels like God is distant or the old ways of praying no longer work, recognize that you are simply experiencing the Ascension. The old, small concepts of God are leaving so the infinite Spirit can rush in. Rest in the present moment. Breathe into the reality that eternal life is happening in your chest right now, and dare to believe Jesus’s prayer: You are already drawn into the ultimate singularity of Love. You are One.

A Mystic’s Prayer for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

O Infinite Singularity,

We confess that we are terrified of the void,

Always grasping for external certainties and clinging to the God we thought we knew.

Give us the courage to stand in the Upper Room of our own unknowing.

As our old, small concepts of You ascend and disappear,

Settle us into the profound quiet of the present moment.

Awaken us to the truth that eternal life is not a distant reward, but an intimate, immediate knowing.

And breathe through the fragile borders of our ego,

Until we fully realize the breathtaking reality of Your prayer:

That we are seamlessly, eternally One, just as You are One.

Amen.

[u/Double-Tradition413]

“My friends, the ultimate goal of the spiritual journey is not to simply stand in the presence of God, but to entirely lose the boundary of where you end and God begins.”

That’s beautiful. Thank you for this. This is my first time reading this sub Reddit. Very nice.