Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Catholic Register
January 18, 2026
The Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity, which begins Jan. 18, takes place each year in the days leading up to the celebration of the Conversion of St. Paul on Jan. 25, when the Pope travels to the Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome to pray with other Christian leaders for what Jesus prayed during the Last Supper, that we might be truly one.
It’s appropriate that it takes place at the Basilica where St. Paul is buried, because the Apostle to the Gentiles fought so hard among the first Christians for that unity, urging us to “live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, … striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:1-6).
In so many of his letters, St. Paul fought to preserve that unity when those of Hebrew and Greek weren’t sharing, when the Christian community was dividing into camps according to their favorite teacher (Apollo, Peter or Paul), when the Judaizing Christians in Galatia or Rome were seeking to have the baptized live according to the Mosaic law, or when they “biting and devouring” each other through prioritizing worldly concerns over God’s (1 Cor 1:12, 1 Cor 11:18-34; Gal 5:15).
St. Paul, who converted outside the Damascus gates when Jesus spoke to him and revealed to him his total identification with the Church — “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4) — thereafter fought to remind Jesus’ disciples that Christ is not divided (1 Cor 1:13). Therefore the distinctions within his Body, between men and women, Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, should never become divisions (Gal 3:28). He made the analogy of the human body to drive home the point: “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ, for in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,” whether we’re analogously hands, eyes, ears or feet (1 Cor 12: 12-27).
The Church looks to St. Paul during this Octave asking not just his intercession but seeking to imitate his faith and fight for Christian unity.
To be a Christian is to seek unity because that’s what Jesus himself seeks. On the night before he would be executed, during the celebration of the first Mass, Jesus poured out his heart to his Father in what was truly the first Eucharistic prayer. He prayed for his apostles and then all of us who would owe our faith in Christ to the preaching of the apostles and their collaborators and successors, asking for something specific and almost incomprehensible: “That they may be all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (Jn 17:20-21). Jesus prayed that our unity with each other be as complete as the perfect unity that exists between the persons of the Blessed Trinity.
We might be tempted to dismiss Jesus’ prayer as something that, however beautiful, is clearly utopian and unachievable. But Jesus would never have prayed for something intrinsically impossible. Prayer for him was never an exercise in “wishful thinking,” since he was fully aware both of the Father’s goodness and power. Moreover, it is inconceivable that God the Father would refuse the prayer of his Son. As Jesus acknowledged as he prayed out loud to the Father before raising Lazarus from the dead, “I thank you, Father, for having heard me. I know that you always hear me” (Jn 11:42). Therefore, if Jesus were praying that we be one, that we be as united among ourselves as the Persons in the Blessed Trinity are united, then that must mean it is not impossible and that the Father heard that prayer.
While it is true that this communion will be perfectly achieved only in heaven — in the communion of saints within the communion-of-persons who is the Blessed Trinity — it is also clear that Jesus was praying for it in this world. During the same prayer he said to his Father, “I am not asking you to take them [us] out of the world.” He wanted us to be “in” the world without being “of” it, and then he gave us the reason our unity is so important: it would be the greatest sign of all of Jesus’ incarnation and mission and of divine love. Jesus implored: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that … the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn 17:15-23).
The unity of Jesus’ disciples, in other words, will be the greatest testimony of the truth of Christ’s coming and ongoing presence in the Church until the end of time and the most effective witness of the transformative power of the love of the Trinity. Division among Christians, on the contrary, would, therefore, be the greatest scandal of all.
The success of the Church’s mission for the world’s salvation depends on her credibility, and Jesus was declaring that that credibility depends on her communion in love.
We saw this in the early Church in Jerusalem, when the first believers of Jesus prayed together, ate together, made pilgrimages to Jerusalem together and generously and voluntarily sacrificed their own property for the sake of their new spiritual family members. And the missionary 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).
It is obvious that we — Christians and Catholics — do not have the type of union in the world sought by Christ.
The chronicle of divisions in Church history — from the Christological heresies in the early Church, to Great Schism with the Orthodox in 1054, to the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, to so many other separations through the centuries — is not a sign that Jesus’ prayer was ineffectual or had an expiration date. The reason for division rests in disciples’ rejecting God’s graces, in not taking seriously Christ’s prayer and will, in not cooperating with the work of the Holy Spirit, the personal unity between the Father and the Son, who was sent by the Father and the Son to help make us one. Every sin ruptures communion. Every genuine act of Christian love begins to repair it.
The ultimate battle in which all 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. The devil, however, is always seeking to isolate us, to divide us, and permanently alienate us from God and from others.
Our new Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, chose as his papal motto words from his spiritual father, St. Augustine, on Christian unity: In illo uno, unum, literally, “In that one, one,” meaning, “One in the one Christ.” He sees his mission as Christ’s earthly vicar to try to unite his flock, in accordance with Jesus’ prayer and in spiritual continuity with St. Paul’s zealous work. The night of his election, Pope Leo said that together we “must look for ways to be a missionary Church.” That begins, as Jesus himself indicated in his prayer on Holy Thursday, with Christian unity.
As disciples of Jesus, therefore, let’s enter into his prayer for unity so that we might become, together, the answer to that plea.