Christian unity is a gift. Christian disunity is a sin, a wound.
It threatens the very integrity of the Body of Christ. It cripples us in playing our part in Christ’s mission of bringing good news to the world, the mission of evangelization, the very reason for the church's existence in this world.
Our Lord’s prayer for the unity of his disciples “that they may all be one” is tied to the mission that he gives to them, “so that the world may believe” (Jn 17:21)…. Insofar as Christians fail to be the visible sign of this unity they fail in their missionary duty to be the instrument bringing all people into the saving unity which is the communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (The Bishop and Christian Unity, 5 June, 2020)
As we pray for the gift of Christian unity, of integrity in Christ — or rather, as we join in Christ’s own prayer that we be one as he is one with the Father in the Holy Spirit — we need to be honest with ourselves about the sin of disunity that wounds, fragments and disintegrates the church.
What does it mean for us that we are splintered into so many sects (or “denominations” as we prefer to call it now)? Why the schisms and mutual anathemas? Why this colossal failure on our part?
There are no easy answers. Because these are not easy questions.
So where do we begin to ask the questions and seek the answers?
Christian disunity is a wound in Christ’s already crucified body. And that’s where we must begin ... if we are ever to find the answer to these hard questions: Christ, and him crucified — a stumbling block to religion and foolishness to the world; but to those who place their trust, their faith, in Christ Crucified, he is the power of God and the wisdom of God (to lightly paraphrase Saint Paul, 1 Cor 1:23-24).
Jesus was crucified in order to “reveal things hidden since the foundation of the world” (cf. Matthew 13:34-35). His crucifixion was his ultimate “parable” — that is, a crisis-inducing provocation causing us to re-think, to “re-pent”, and so to be transformed.
So, what does his crucifixion reveal? God. Nothing less than God. And to be more precise, that God is love (cf. 1 John 4) … self-giving, self-sacrifice, the “sacrifice” to end all false and misguided and distorted forms of sacrifice.
For instead of offering the dead bodies of our victims (both actual and metaphorical) to some angry projection of our own violence and viciousness we dub “the gods”, Jesus offered himself. He gave his life … for love of us. All of us … including the men crucifying him, and the men who ordered his crucifixion, and the jeering crowds who mocked him. All of us.
He gave his life, his living self, even unto death to break the power of sin and death over our minds and hearts; those minds that imagined God to be nothing more than a more vicious, angry, judgmental and violent version of ourselves; and those hearts that we hardened against both God and one another as we sacrificed countless numbers of innocent victims on countless altars and crosses throughout our sad and vile history.
Christ’s “sacrifice” is the giving of self which just about defines “love”. Instead of the false peace and unity that the world bestows upon itself by sacrificing its victims, Jesus bestows peace and unity upon us by giving himself — at once to us and to the Father. In doing so he shows us how to really be human, fully human, as God’s image towards God’s perfect likeness: give your own living selves as an offering of praise and thanks. Not as each other’s victims, each other’s dead bodies, and in expiation to some angry deity that demands it of us; but on the contrary: give our own living selves, and in eucharistic self-giving as thanks and praise.
He gave himself; and we are called to do likewise:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1)
If we really want the unity that God alone can — and will! — bestow (for how could the Father ever refuse the Son’s petition!), then we need to imitate Christ, and him crucified: we have to give ourselves as he did, lovingly.
Come Holy Spirit, bond of love uniting Father and Son, one God, come! Unite us in your Triune Mystery of Love. Open our hearts to love as you love, our minds to see as you see, our souls to live as you live, that the world may believe the good news that all are loved absolutely, infinitely, eternally. So be it! Amen.
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