The Great High Priest Prays for His People, Part 4

"And I am no longer in the world. He assigns another reason why he prays so earnestly for the disciples, namely, because they will very soon be deprived of his bodily presence, under which they had reposed till now…Now that he is about to depart, he asks that the Father will guard them by his protection. And he does so on their account; for he provides a remedy for their trembling, that they may rely on God himself, to whose hands, as it were, he now commits them. It yields no small consolation to us, when we learn that the Son of God becomes so much the more earnest about the salvation of his people, when he leaves them as to his bodily presence…while we are laboring under difficulties in the world, he keeps his eye on us, to send down, from his heavenly glory, relief from our distresses…. For Christ, having been appointed by the Father to be their guardian for a time, and having now discharged the duties of that office gives them back again, as it were, into the hands of the Father, that henceforth they may enjoy his protection, and may be upheld by his power. It amounts therefore to this, that, when the disciples are deprived of Christ's bodily presence they suffer no loss, because God receives them under his guardianship, the efficacy of which shall never cease." – John Calvin