That they be all – together holy in truth (Jn 17,19)
That they be all – together holy in truth (Jn 17,19)

Summary/Abstract: In a succinct formula, Jn 17,19 describes the foundation of the Church as our sharing in the holiness and truth to which Jesus commits himself. To ponder the depth of this verse the article calls on René Girard’s mimetic theory and Jan Patočka’s phenomenology. The latter’s notion of ‘care of the soul’ in Socratic sense illustrates what it means to shun any distraction from commitment to the ‘wholeness of the world’, whereas Girard’s theory of the dominant mimesis shows how this openness is constantly pulled into the mechanism of scapegoating and rivalry. Together they portray the immense challenge of humanity, being called to a total truthfulness of integrity, to which the faith of Christ opens the way. For them the truth has a practical dimension: responsibility for oneself and the world (Patočka) and overcoming in oneself sacrificial logic.

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