John 17:13

"But now I come to thee." Seest thou that the discourse is composed rather in a human manner? So that should any wish from these words to lower the Son, he will lower the Father also. Observe, in proof of this, how from the beginning He speaketh partly as though informing and explaining to Him, partly as enjoining. Informing, as when He saith, "I pray not for the world"; enjoining, as, "I have kept them until now," "and none of them is lost"; and, "do Thou therefore now keep them," He saith. And again, "Thine they were, and Thou hast given them unto Me" and "While I was in the world I kept them." But the solution of all is, that the words were addressed to their infirmity.

(Tr. cvii) Or thus: That they might have the joy spoken of above: That they may be one, as We are one. This His joy, i. e. bestowed by Him, He says, is to be fulfilled in them: on which account He spoke thus in the world. This joy is the peace and happiness of the life to come. He says He spoke in the world, though He had just now said, I am no more in the world. For, inasmuch as He had not yet departed, He was still here; and inasmuch as He was going to depart, He was in a certain sense not here.

"And now," He says, "come I to Thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves." See! He says that He speaketh in the world, when He had said only a little before, "I am no more in the world:" the reason of which we have there explained, or rather have shown that He Himself explained it. Accordingly, on the one hand, as He had not yet departed, He was still here; and because He was on the very point of departure, in a kind of way He was no more here. But what this joy is whereof He says, "That they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves," has already been elucidated above, where He says, "That they may be one, even as we are." This joy of His that is bestowed on them by Him, was to be fulfilled, He says, in them; and for that very end declared that He had spoken in the world. This is that peace and blessedness in the world to come, for the attaining of which we must live temperately, and righteously, and godly in the present.