Unity

            We cannot help but form connections with other people. Through blood, sweat, and tears, through the good and the bad, we are connected to one another. Connected in ways that we cannot fully understand or appreciate until we reach for that unity, for that connection to the other, and it is sadly unavailable. We build these connections in our homes, our schools, our parishes, on the playground and by the water cooler. Unity is essential for true happiness in our families, amongst friends and coworkers, and dare I say it, in our presbyterate.

It is a part of the human condition, this desire to be connected. This is true for the simple fact that humanity was not originally created to be alone, by ourselves. No, we were created to live together, to live in community with each other and God and our miserable fall does not change that it just makes it harder. A few, however, are called to a life in apparent opposition to this unity, a life of an anchorite, but even these lone souls must spend years within a community, and afterwards retain a sense of unity with those who are not at hand. In these instances a unity without proximity. The kind of unity we can strive for in our own lives but never fully take in while we still walk on this earth. Image a unity with God and all humanity; the joy of being one.

God calls us to strive for this unity which can never be perfectly realized in our mortality. A perfection, like so many other perfections, which can only be recognized in the face of God after our dying day. We are called to be one in the Body of Christ, to take from Paul an understanding of our place in that Body and celebrate the way it works, always under the guidance of Christ. Called still to place ourselves in that fleeing band of Israelites, in the crowd before the temple sacrifice, and even at the foot of a cross that held what seemed to be an end to a prophetic life, but instead held the fulfillment of hope itself. We are called to find ourselves alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ at that moment that our salvation was made possible.

It is all too easy to desire separation from this unity. A desire to walk away from that column of smoke and out into the dessert of life on one’s own, to walk out of the temple repulsed by offerings to relive the sins of the entire chosen people, and even disheartened enough to flee that hill, that cross. All of these desires for individualism, whatever the reason, drive a nail into the heart of that Body of Christ, tearing its members apart.

            Instead let us hold fast to one another, uniting our prayers in a single voice. With this unity let us assemble a line that approaches the altar and receive the one thing that can truly allow us to grow in love for God. In this way unity can bring us closer to each other and closer to God who helps us realize that together we gain so much and apart, even if missing just one, we are weakened just as much as they are weakened.