Christ’s Prayer for Christian Unity, Seventh Thursday of Easter, May 20, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, New York, NY
Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter
May 20, 2021
Acts 22:30.23:6-11, Ps 16, Jn 17:20-26

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

  • Today as we continue our preparations for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we are provoked by today’s readings to examine the Holy Spirit’s work of unity. He is the personified loving union between the Father and the Son and he has been sent by the Father and the Son so that we might enter into that communion with God and with others, so that we might become one Body, one Spirit, in Christ. The ultimate, eschatological battle in which all of creation is engaged is one of communion versus disunity. Jesus came to reconcile all things in himself, to draw all things to himself on the Cross, to make us one flock with one Shepherd. This will culminate in heaven, when we hope to enter into the communion of saints within the communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But it is opposed by the work of the devil, who is always seeking to isolate us, divide us, and permanently alienate us from God and from others. The most accurate image of Hell is not one full of flames; it’s one in which everyone is as far as possible away from others… The choices we make here on earth are ultimately able to be understood as choices for or against communion with God and others.
  • Jesus prays in the Gospel that we might be as united with each other as Father and Son are united, something that’s impossible for us but not impossible for God. This communion of saints among the communion who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the Spirit’s principal work. Everything else is an explicitation of that mission. Jesus prays for the success of that Mission in today’s Gospel with insistence, begging him that we might be one so that the world might know that he was sent by the Father and that the Father loves us just as he loves him. That’s an extraordinary prayer that points to the Holy Spirit’s mission. The world will be convinced of Jesus’ presence and mission by the way we’re united with each other. The world will be convinced of God’s personal love for each of us by the way love each other. Our union, our Christian communion brought about by the Holy Spirit, is the most important element of the new evangelization. That’s why we pray for that unity at every Mass as well, uniting ourselves as Bride to Bridegroom, as Body to Head, praying for that gift.
  • We might be tempted to dismiss Jesus’ prayer as something that sounds beautiful, but which is obviously utopian and beyond our grasp. But Jesus would never have prayed for something impossible. He, through whom we and the whole world were created, never engaged in “wishful thinking.” He not only knew the Truth about us and God, but enfleshed that Truth, fully aware of what was possible and what was not. It is also true that the Father would never refuse the prayer of his Son. As Jesus prayed before the raising of Lazarus, “I thank you, Father, for having heard me. I know that you always hear me” (Jn 11:42). The Father always hears his prayer. Therefore, if Jesus were praying that we be one, that we be as united among ourselves as are the Persons in the Blessed Trinity and that we abide in them as they abide in each other, then that must mean it is possible and is what should be the reality among us. This dual communion is, in fact, what will happen in heaven. If by God’s mercy we follow Christ all the way to heaven, we will be in full communion with the Communion-of-Persons-in-Love who is the Holy Trinity and in that communion, we will be in full communion with everyone else in the communion of saints.
  • What is obvious to us, though, is that we do not have this union in this world. We see the ugliness of disunity, of the lack of the Holy Spirit, in today’s first reading in the dispute between the Pharisees and Sadducees about the Resurrection, and about the way so many of the Sadducees and Pharisees were not only fighting each other but against Paul and the proclamation of the Gospel. But we see such seemingly intractable divisions often. So many families are in fact divided today. Countries, like our own, are polarized. Even the Church is fractured in so many camps. This is not a new problem. In the early days of Christianity, there was the division between the Greeks and the Jews especially with regard to the care of widows. There were the numerous heresies that divided the Church: Gnosticism, Marcionism, Sabellianism, Donatism, Arianism, Nestorianism, Eutychism, Monophysitism, Monotheletism and the Iconoclasm controversy. Since 1054, the Church has been divided between Catholics and Orthodox. For the last 504 years, the Church in the West has been divided between Catholics and Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Pentecostals and tens of thousands of other Protestant denominations. Outside observers studying the Church today will often notice far more easily what divides us than the unity that Christ prayed would exist. In the Church, the world, the family, even within the individual, these divisions always come from the work of the ancient serpent. Just like he divided Adam and Eve from God and each other, just as he introduced internal divisions in each of them between soul and body, divisions that led in the next generation to Cain’s killing Abel and so many other consequences, so the devil, the diabolos (or one who throws off course) is always at work seeking to separate. And we use our freedom to consent to these temptations. We give into pride, and envy, anger and greed, all of which clearly not only separate us from God but divide us from others. And others’ actions through consenting to the same temptations compounds the damage. All of this totally contrary to the communion based on the loving communion among Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Blessed Trinity.
  • But it is not as if this type of unity has never been approximated. The first disciples approached it. The members of the Church in Jerusalem “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers,” as we read in the Acts of the Apostles. “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” And the impact of their loving union was dramatic, obtaining the results Jesus prayed such union would bring about: “Day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42-47).
  • The chronicle of division that has happened in the Church since then is not a sign that Jesus’ prayer was ineffectual or had an expiration date. Jesus’ prayer was heard and God the Father will certainly not withhold the graces necessary for this communion. The reason for division rests in our not receiving those graces, in the actions various Christians have committed over the course of the centuries against communion, and in the various things we have failed to do in order to keep communion. Every sin ruptures communion. Every genuine act of Christian love begins to repair it. If this communion with God and with each other meant so much to the Lord that, on the night he was betrayed, he poured out his very soul praying for it to the Father, then each of us who loves him must make it our life’s mission to try to bring about that union of love. But the question is: how can this communion be brought about?
  • Last year we celebrated the 25th anniversary of St. John Paul II’s encyclical on Christian Unity, Ut Unum Sint. In it he expressed the Church’s “irreversible commitment” to Christian unity and stressed the centrality and urgency of the ecumenical task. He called ecumenism “one of the pastoral priorities of my pontificate” and said it “is not just some sort of ‘appendix’ that is added to the Church’s traditional activity. Rather, ecumenism is an organic part of her life and work, and consequently “must pervade all that she is and does.” He stated simply, “To believe in Christ means to desire unity; to desire unity means to desire the Church; to desire the Church means to desire the communion of grace that corresponds to the Father’s plan from all eternity. Such is the meaning of Christ’s prayer: ‘Ut unum sint.’” The ecumenical goal, he stated, cannot be achieved by “human powers and capacities,” and therefore the first step of ecumenism is public and private prayer for God’s assistance, opening ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit, joining ourselves to Christ’s intentions and interceding for each other that we may grow in ardent fidelity to God’s will. The second step is conversion, a true change of heart, involving repentance and reparation for sins against unity, like “long-standing misgivings inherited from the past,” “mutual misunderstandings, prejudices, complacency, insufficient knowledge of the other,” “refusals to forgive,” and “pride.” Conversion also involves striving to grow in “love, self-denial, humility, patience” and “renewal and reform of the Church.” The third step is dialogue, which he says is not “simply an exchange of ideas …[but] always an exchange of gifts,” in which people enter as partners seeking reconciliation and unity and truth. Such dialogue, he adds, cannot take place on just on the “horizontal dimension” of meetings and exchanges of points of view, but must feature a “primarily vertical thrust” in which we all seek, contritely, to listen to and respond to God. That perspective allows dialogue to take place in a context of love directed to God and in God toward others, as well as helps all partners remain faithful to what they consider essentials and to avoid false irenicism, indifference, half-hearted commitment, defeatism or prejudicial opposition. The most effective dialogue of all, he says, is that of the saints and the martyrs who witness to the will of God in things little and big until the end. Jesus sends the gift of the Holy Spiri to bring about that prayer, that conversion, that dialogue and ultimately that communion. Last Thursday, we celebrated the Ascension of the Lord into heaven. In his last words before ascending, he instructed the apostles to stay in Jerusalem until they were clothed with power from on high. The end of Jesus’ physical life on earth was meant to pass into the beginning of the Church when that power from on high, the Holy Spirit, came down on Pentecost, which we will mark next Sunday. The Holy Spirit is the personal loving communion between God the Father and God the Son. God the Father and the Son send us the Holy Spirit to help us enter into that communion, what St. Paul calls the “unity of the Spirit.”
  • Today the Church celebrates the Memorial of St. Bernardine of Siena who shows us how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in bringing about unity. Once, as a young man, he was listening to the great Dominican preacher St. Vincent Ferrer when Ferrer was preparing to leave Italy to begin preaching in France. The Italians wanted to detain him, but he said that among his listeners was someone who would continue his priestly mission. Bernardine would later realize that he was that one that Ferrer recognized. St. Bernardine, born in 1380, suffered a great deal when he was young. He lost his mother at age 3 and his dad at age 7 and was raised by an aunt. As a teenager, he began to work in hospitals, caring for the sick. When the plague struck Siena in 1400, and many of the officials of the hotel fled, he organized 12 of his young friends as he assumed the direction of the hospital. He never was infected by the pestilence but the work load left him exhausted for four months afterward. After caring for a sick aunt until his death, he took time to ponder the direction of his life, before sensing a vocation to join the Franciscans of the Strict Observance in 1403. To help people remember the presence of Jesus with them seeking to save and sanctify them, he made a monogram with the first three letters in Greek of the name Jesus — IHS — on a tablet and leading those present in veneration and invocation. At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus told the Father, “I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.” God’s name — “I am who am,” and “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” and the rest of us! — has that power of unity. Jesus’ names, Emmanuel (God with us) and Jesus (God saves) has the power of unity. The name is never just letters or syllables but a means by which to enter into an I-thou relationship with God. And there is no other name by which we are saved that the name St. Bernardine proclaimed. He proclaimed it by the power of the Holy Spirit and he shared with us his secret for how “the Holy Spirit will be your master, and will give you such wisdom and such a tongue that no adversary will be able to stand against you.” The secret is: “In all your actions, seek in the first place the kingdom of God and his glory. Direct all you do purely to his honor. Persevere in brotherly charity, and practice first all that you desire to teach others.” All three actions — seeking God’s kingdom and the hallowing of his name, loving our brothers and sisters in needs, and putting into practice what we want to pass on — are all means to grow in communion.
  • We pray at Mass that the Holy Spirit will make us “one body, one Spirit in Christ.”  To make us one body with Him and with others, Jesus commanded us to consume his body. It is not coincidental that since the beginning, we have called our reception of the Lord Jesus’s real presence “holy communion,” because by receiving God inside, we are supposed to be caught up into communion with God and with all of the other members of the Church, the “Body of Christ.” The reception of Holy Communion is supposed to be sign of a communion that already exists and a source of a deepening of that communion. Thomas Aquinas used to teach that the ultimate effect of the Sacrament of Holy Communion is not Jesus’ real presence on the altar. Jesus’ real presence is both an effect and a sacrament of something else: namely the communion that he seeks to bring about in us as we, in communion with him, enter into communion with each other. To the extent that we receive Jesus in Holy Communion and don’t seek communion with each other, we’re receiving poorly. That’s why Jesus told us in the Sermon of the Mount that if we come to the altar and recognize that our brother has something against us, that we should first reconcile and then come and bring our gift. We can’t have communion with Jesus but not ardently desire communion with each other. When we truly receive Jesus well, he is at work within us, helping us to become more like him, so that we might love others the way he does, and enter into a communion of love with him. Let us pray this Mass and receive Holy Communion today earnestly desiring that unity that Jesus prayed for in the first Mass!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading 1 ACTS 22:30; 23:6-11

Wishing to determine the truth
about why Paul was being accused by the Jews,
the commander freed him
and ordered the chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin to convene.
Then he brought Paul down and made him stand before them.
Paul was aware that some were Sadducees and some Pharisees,
so he called out before the Sanhedrin,
“My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees;
I am on trial for hope in the resurrection of the dead.”
When he said this,
a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and Sadducees,
and the group became divided.
For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection
or angels or spirits,
while the Pharisees acknowledge all three.
A great uproar occurred,
and some scribes belonging to the Pharisee party
stood up and sharply argued,
“We find nothing wrong with this man.
Suppose a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?”
The dispute was so serious that the commander,
afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them,
ordered his troops to go down and rescue Paul from their midst
and take him into the compound.
The following night the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage.
For just as you have borne witness to my cause in Jerusalem,
so you must also bear witness in Rome.”

Responsorial Psalm PS 16:1-2A AND 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11

R. (1) Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Keep me, O God, for in you I take refuge;
I say to the LORD, “My Lord are you.”
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup,
you it is who hold fast my lot.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I bless the LORD who counsels me;
even in the night my heart exhorts me.
I set the LORD ever before me;
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices,
my body, too, abides in confidence;
Because you will not abandon my soul to the nether world,
nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
You will show me the path to life,
fullness of joys in your presence,
the delights at your right hand forever.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.

Alleluia JN 17:21

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
May they all be one as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that the world may believe that you sent me, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel JN 17:20-26

Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying:
“I pray not only for these,
but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
so that they may all be one,
as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that they also may be in us,
that the world may believe that you sent me.
And I have given them the glory you gave me,
so that they may be one, as we are one,
I in them and you in me,
that they may be brought to perfection as one,
that the world may know that you sent me,
and that you loved them even as you loved me.
Father, they are your gift to me.
I wish that where I am they also may be with me,
that they may see my glory that you gave me,
because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
Righteous Father, the world also does not know you,
but I know you, and they know that you sent me.
I made known to them your name and I will make it known,
that the love with which you loved me
may be in them and I in them.”’
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