Christian unity already exists. It’s just that we Christians are blind to it. We don’t see it because we are too lost in ourselves. We don’t realize it because we are too focused on our own traditions. We don’t perceive it because we are too concerned with how right we are in our own convictions and how wrong everyone else is in theirs. We can’t see the Christian unity “wood” for the Christian disunity “trees.” It’s almost as if, for all the talk about Christian unity and ecumenism, we don’t actually want it because we are too proud to admit our errors, to confess our sins and to be open in humility to accepting fully the unity which is already there. We are too comfortable where we are to repent.

What is this unity that’s already there? It’s the one we hear about in every Mass when the priest says at the end of the opening prayer: “through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit.” We hear it again in the famous benediction formula used in many traditions of the Reform: “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship or communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Christian unity is but a sharing in the unity of the Blessed Trinity in which the Holy Spirit is the power and bond of that unity. Christian unity is full communion in the truth and love of God. Even if all Christian denominations were to come to an agreement to be united with each other, their unity would be a merely human arrangement unless it proceeded from the unity of the Holy Spirit. And there is only one Holy Spirit and therefore only one unity, one truth, one love, one baptism, one Church. There isn’t a Catholic Holy Spirit and a Methodist Holy Spirit and an Orthodox Holy Spirit. Hence everyone whom Christ has baptised by water and the Holy Spirit is already established in the deepest reality of Christian unity, even if they don’t yet fully understand that. It is a divine unity, an eternal unity, an unbreakable unity. It is participation in God.

It is the Holy Spirit, then, who is the source and substance of Christian unity. As love, He is therefore likewise the source and substance of Christian diversity which is rooted in that unity and blossoms from it. The Trinity itself is Diversity in Unity and so humanity in general and the Church in particular will, must, manifest a wonderful diversity in unity. But diversity is not division. The Holy Spirit is not the source is Christian division, which is rooted in sin. In fact, Christian division is a contradiction in terms because no division exists in Christ. The divider of Christians is the diabolical spirit, the Evil One. The word diabolical actually means divisive. Since the time of Christ and, sadly, with the free cooperation of Christians, including Catholics, he has worked to bring about the circumstances which foment division, opposition and hostility.

One especially pernicious aspect of his work is seen in the way in which Christians on all sides try to justify their divisions, their disobedience to the Holy Spirit, even by using what they consider to be theological arguments. They invoke God to justify their disobedience to God. They believe the Holy Spirit in prayer leads them to think and act in a way which actually saddens the Holy Spirit. They believe that Christ convinces them to work for the rupture of Christ’s own Body. Sometimes disagreement and fraternal correction are necessary to preserve unity in diversity. But division is never necessary because there is no division in Christ and so there cannot be in His Body.

That the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is still divided, means that Christ is still being crucified by us. It’s as if we won’t let Him die to put an end to our divisions or rise to reconcile us in His Body to the Father. Christian division sends the message to the world that Christ is still dead or that He could not be who He claimed to be because He couldn’t even get His own followers to live in union with Him.

The magnificent vision of Isaiah in the first reading is that the Servant of God would be a light to the nations and bring salvation to the ends of the earth. But it rings hollow when the witness of the Church only demonstrates to the ends of the earth that we are still in darkness. We are, as is said in the parable, like those who receive the light but hide it under a tub, the tub of our small minds and hearts. Or again, as the Baptist testified: I myself did not know Him, but the One who sent me to baptize told me that the man on whom the Spirit descends and remains is the Son of God, the Lamb of God, and He will baptize with the Holy Spirit. Well, we Christians have received that baptism but it’s as if we have reverted to the first words I quoted of the Baptist and got stuck there: I myself do not know Him. For how can we really say we know Him when we parcel Him out among ourselves like the first Christians of Corinth, with slogans like, “I am for the Pope”, “I am for Luther”, “I am for the Henry VIII”, as if it were we ourselves who had the authority to say who or what is right or wrong?

So, we must pray and work for Christian Unity – not that it willhappen, but that we will let its reality manifest itself in us. What is required of us is what Christ did: He emptied Himself to become man, die and rise in obedience to the Father’s will so that we would receive the Spirit. We need humility to empty ourselves in obedience to the will of God, so that, like Our Lady, whatever He says may happen to us. Her fiat opened the way for the Spirit of unity to incarnate the divine Son in her human flesh. If all who bear the name of Christian, to the last man and woman, would stop and listen to the Word and consent to His will, in a revolution of humility and prayer, in a conversion of mind, memory, heart and will, then Christian Unity would have the opening to show itself even visibly in the whole body of believers. Then Christ would be seen to be risen and His Spirit fully alive in us such that the world may believe.

So, please pray ardently and persistently to the Lord this week and every week, that He will strip us and empty us of all ways of thinking, of all attitudes and habits of mind, memory and heart, which impede the whole of His saving will from being welcomed and accepted by Christians. May He purify us from all merely human customs and convictions which form a great, thick, heavy tub over His redeeming Light which is deep in our hearts by baptism. And may all Christians stand with the Baptist, and with genuine spiritual wonder, cry out, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!”, so that through us His salvation may reach the ends of the earth.