The single light of perfect unity which we experience with Jesus and one another in the depths of prayer becomes refracted, as it were, into a variety of possibilities as to how exactly interior unity should be lived in the concrete, in the face of shifting circumstances, opinions, particular needs, cultural backgrounds, etc.
The greatest challenge for the Church is how to incarnate the one eternal Gospel of Jesus Christ in ever-changing and -challenging circumstances, how to safeguard carefully the precious Mysteries of the faith and the perfect unity that results from our having received the one Spirit and the one Love of Jesus. The Church’s great task is how to be faithful to all these sacred and immutable Truths, how to dynamically hand them down, always within the necessarily shifting field of tensions that is concrete life on earth. Only our continual mindfulness of our common source in God’s loving Providence will temper our individual points of view and initiatives, and transform them from impulses for possible disruption and schism into the rich, symphonic energy of the Creator Spirit, who is forever renewing the beauty of the one Bride of Christ.
But this transformation of potentially disruptive into effectively creative energy can never occur simply by our own effort, desire, talents, or even prayer. It must be a work of God’s overwhelming Mercy.
Photograph by Brother Brian. Reflection by Father Simeon.
