ACC ~ John 17 v11a

JESUS ALREADY ANTICIPATING HIS DEPARTURE

AUGUSTINE: “And now,” he adds, “I am no more in the world, and these are in the world.” If your thoughts turn to the very hour in which he was speaking, both [he and his disciples] were still in the world. And yet, we must not understand “I am no more in the world” metaphorically of the heart and life. … For there is one word used here that makes any such understanding altogether inadmissible, because he does not say, “And I am not in the world” but “I am no more in the world.” In this way he shows that he himself had been in the world but was no more so. And so are we then at liberty to believe that he at one time savored the world, but, delivered from such a mistake, no longer retained such a disposition? Who would venture to shut himself up in so profane a meaning? It remains, therefore, that in the same sense in which he himself also was previously in the world, he declared that he was no longer in the world, that is to say, in his bodily presence. In other words, he was showing that his own absence from the world was now in the immediate future, and his disciples’ absence would be later when he said that he was no longer here but they were—although both he and they were still present. He was using the prevailing custom of human speech. Do we not say every day, “he is no longer here,” about someone who is on the very point of departure? And we talk this way especially about those who are at the point of death. And besides all else, the Lord himself, as if foreseeing the thoughts that might possibly be excited in those who were afterward to read these words, added, “And I come to you,” explaining at least in some measure why he said, “I am no more in the world.” TRACTATES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 107.4. [1]

[1] NPNF 1 7:403**; CCL 36:614.

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