The great Priestly Prayer of Jesus in John 17 ends the Last Supper Discourse. The prayer can be divided into three sub-units: 1-5 (The Glorification of the Son), 6-19 (Those Given To Him From The World), 20-26 (Those Who Will Believe In Their Word). After Jesus then prays for His glorification (Passion, Death and Resurrection/Ascension/Giving of the Holy Spirit), he prays not only for the first generation Christians, but also for those future generation of Christians who will believe in Him through the testimony of His witnesses.
An outline of the whole prayer and a reading guide for the whole chapter is provided at Angfrayle's Reading Guide.
1.The Sunday selection is from the portion of Jesus' prayer for the disciples who have been with him. The first petition that Jesus makes is that the Father should keep them and make them one ("Just as we are one"). The petition to make them one will also reverberate in the prayer for future generations. "To be one" is to be "one Body, one Church." In other words, the petition for oneness is similar to Paul's wish for the Corinthians in 1 Cor. 12:12ff. Read this latter passage and reflect on the kind of unity that is asked for by Jesus? Is it anything similar to just "mabuting samahan?"
2. Jesus asked the Father to protect "his own" from the evil one. This is a prayer that the disciples would not be led away just as Judas had been (cf. v. 12) The only guarantee that the disciples have against the enmity of the world is His Word. The disciples will be living in a hostile world that will try to lead them away from the communion they have with the Father , Son and the Holy Spirit. In what ways do you think is this happening now?
3. Jesus prays that by his consecration in His death, his disciples too would be consecrated in the truth. "To be consecrated" is to be set aside for something, to be apart from what is considered ordinary, day-to-day, in other words, the pro-fanum, the God-less. In our contemporary terms, the saecularized. It is in the power of this consecration that the disciples ,too, are sent out into the world, just as Jesus had been.
How do you understand your consecration in baptism in reference to the saecularized world in which we live?
