"Eternal life is this: to know you, the one true God, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ". In your missal or Mass booklet, you may find these words in today's Gospel enclosed in brackets and may wonder why this is so. For various reasons, scholars suspect that Jesus did not say these exact words: they are rather the prayerful reflection of someone copying a Gospel manuscript. Nevertheless, they offer us a very precious insight into Jesus' teaching. Knowing the Father and knowing Jesus is a theme which recurs throughout the four Gospels, but with particular emphasis in John's Gospel.

St Ignatius encourages us to cultivate "familiarity with God", for that familiarity will give us the interior strength which we need in order to live out the Gospel spirit. This notion of "familiarity" leads to the affirmation that prayer is a conversation with God as with an intimate friend.

On different occasions Jesus taught us that in this life we already begin to possess eternal life. Knowing Jesus and the Father in prayer is another affirmation of that great promise.