THAT THEY MAY BE ONE

Jn 17:20-26

Today’s Gospel presents to us the third and last part of the Priestly Prayer of Jesus at the last supper, in which he looks toward the future and manifests his great desire for unity among his disciples. Jesus prays for his disciples and for all who will come to believe through their ministry including all of us who ponder his words today. He prays for unity, a unity that will so perfectly reflect the unity he shares with the Father. “I pray that they may be one in us, as you, father, are in me and I in you.”

Looking at this prayer in our society today it is noticeable that we have terribly failed Him with our divisions, with so many different Christian churches, and denominations, with all the kinds of violence and wars in the world. Situations of disunity in the world are signs that indeed, in our earthly lives, we have not yet fully experienced the reality of the intimate relationship between the Father and the Son. I am sure that Jesus was not praying for uniformity in administration, organization, liturgical rites and worship, but rather a unity of personal relationship in love.  It means a unity that would bind us in love for one another, respect for each other’s belief and accepting people for what they are, not for what we want them to be.

What disunites us is that sometimes we think we have the monopoly of truth or the real relationship with God. Christian unity means going beyond all these differences and joining together in love. As the existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel said: “Christian unity is like a symphony composed of different instruments but forming a beautiful music.” The Second Vatican Council in the document called, Decree on Ecumenism states that: “There can be no unity, no ecumenism worthy of the name without a change of heart. For it is from newness of attitudes and from self-denial and abundant love that unity takes its rise and grows toward maturity. We should therefore pray to the divine Spirit for the grace to be genuinely self-denying, humble, gentle in the service of others, and to have an attitude of brotherly generosity.” With Jesus who prays and longs for our unity with Him and Father as well as our unity with one another, we humbly pray that we may enter more deeply into the love-relationship of God and move on to concretely live out this unity wherever we are, in our being and our doing.