That elusive unity
January 18 to 25 is, in the Catholic liturgical calendar, the Christian Unity Octave. It’s a week of intense prayer for achieving this tremendous gift of unity among all Christians who, sadly, have been divided through the ages for one reason or another.
That it ends on January 25, the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, is significant, since St. Paul is known to be that special vessel appointed by Christ to bring the Gentiles, those who were not Jews, the Chosen People, to the faith. He can therefore be the symbol for Christian unity.
Our prayers in this Christian Unity Octave echo that intense prayer of our Lord just before he entered into his passion and death where that famous expression, “ut unum sint,” that they may be one, is made.
That our Lord made this prayer can mean that the goal of unity will be an ongoing concern that will be us till the end of time. That’s because it is a goal inseparably united to our task to love in the truth. And loving will be an endless activity for us. Unity can only be had through love. No love, no unity.
It might be worthwhile to reprise that prayer here, since it contains what I consider to be our Lord’s most heartfelt desire before he “left” us with his death. The word, left, has to be in quotes, since in reality, he never left us.
From the Gospel of St. John, we have this beautiful prayer for us to relish always: “I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but for them whom you have given me, because they are yours. And all my things are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.
“And now I am not in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to you, Holy Father. Keep them in your name whom you have given me, that they may be one, as we also are one.” (9-11)
I must say that repeating these words can give us great benefit since they can unite us with Christ, conforming our sentiments to the deepest yearnings that the heart of our Lord has for us.
Given today’s very secularized world, that is, a world almost Godless and paganized, deformed by all sorts of human miseries, these words can lead us back to the loving heart of Jesus where truth and charity can be found, thereby recovering the original character of our heart that always seeks unity.
We need to work out the recovery of our heart’s original character that is meant for loving, since we are the image and likeness of God, who is love, and with his grace, we have been made children of his, sharers in his very own life.
And unity is the consequence of this love in the truth. It’s a unity that is not uniformity, because God’s love, the pattern of our life, not only respects but also fosters diversity and pluralism, not to cause conflict but rather to enhance points of complementation, understanding and mercy, the essential elements of love.
Love is born, grows and dances in contrasts, much like the magnet where unlike poles attract each other, while like poles repel.
We need to understand well this relation between love and unity. I must say that this point has been largely neglected. Many people have been pursuing false versions of love such that instead of unity, there is conflict and division, envy and even hatred and terrorism.
Or a protracted air of separation and enmity, even if the objective differences are found to really have no basis. This is made possible because of pride that manages to sour any impulses, both spontaneous and deliberate, to attain unity.
This is what I believe is the main culprit to the lack of unity we still have among us, Christian believers. Pride, both of the subtle and the outright types, is responsible for the hardening and the hardened positions the different parties involved in this affair are stuck with.
Thus, that elusive Christian unity can only be attained not so much with polemics as with prayers, sacrifices, common areas of working together for charitable purposes, and, of course, a continuing dialogue always done in a respectful manner.
Only in humility and with bended knees as we repeat Christ´s words, ¨ut unum sint,” that they may be one, can we get closer to genuine Christian unity.(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)
