On Unity in Community

Jn 17:11b “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

The Lord’s prayer in John 17:11b gives us a new understanding of the unity the Lord calls us to as His family, His community, His Church.

The Lord describes this “unity” as His disciples being one, as the Father and the Son is one. There is a transcendence required in the Lord’s vision of unity for His Church. After all, His disciples are human and incapable by themselves of achieving the perfect unity of the Divine Trinity. This transcendence is possible only through grace.

The unity we are called to is not attained independent or separate from God. It is possible only with and in God, when we are one with Him, when our life is joined to His and we become subsumed in His Being. Unity is a state of being one with God, expressed in being one with each other.

Harmony and accord per se do not make for unity. These qualities are also present in godless associations of men. Rather, harmony and accord, when founded in God’s love and God’s will, are the fruit and signs of a community that is one with God.

We may ask the question, how then do we explain the discord, conflict and division that engulfed Christian communities, even the Church, as can be gleaned from its history? How do we explain our own past experiences with discord in our own community? There are no simple answers to this, but we offer this principle: unity is a grace that we need to live up to in this life.

Because of sin, we will struggle, we will fail to love and to obey God’s will from time to time. If we are so weak and imperfect, where then do we base our confidence? Hebrews 4:15-16 gives us the assurance that we do not have a God “who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been similarly tested in every way, yet without sin. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace o receive mercy and to find grace for timely help. 1 Peter 1:4,5 assures as that our inheritance is kept in heaven for us by the power of God. We need to persevere in faith, hope and love.

As His disciples, the Lord teaches us to be united in community as we follow Him in our lives. We are a learning community, learning by our successes and failures, always seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We are in a journey to perfection in love, truth, and unity, a journey of continual conversion. We are fellow pilgrims in the process of purification, who need each other for correction, encouragement, support.

The Lord gave us His name as a mark of our unity as His family. God gave us the Holy Family- Joseph, Mary and Jesus- as a model of unity to emulate. Let us find assurance in the Lord’s promise: “While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost, except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled” Jn 17:12. The Lord will remain with us forever; His presence bonds us together in community.