[ Today's Readings ]
Brothers and sisters:
You are no longer strangers and sojourners,
but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones
and members of the household of God
Jesus is calling us together today. He is calling us to unity! When we think of unity we may imagine marchers with locked arms, moving together for a cause. Our unity also stems from a common purpose. But there is no other purpose like it. There is no other cause so noble or important as this.
Through him the whole structure is held together
and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord;
in him you also are being built together
into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
We are united in the worship of God. God is, among other things, the core foundational principle of all that is. There is no more firm foundation for unity than this. Nor can anything matter more. But that principle can be a little bit too vague to unite the whole world. Scripture is better, but even scripture divides as much as it unites. If worship of God is the most important cause in the world, how can we ensure that we are as unified around him as possible?
We need to let ourselves be "built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone." We need the Church as the sure basis of unity. That is why we celebrate Saints Simon and Jude. They lived and died so that the whole world could come into the union of God's family, the Church. They live now in heaven interceding for that same thing. This explains why Jesus spent the night in prayer not only for those who would later write the bible but rather to choose those who would be the first bishops of his Church.
The heavens declare the glory of God. But the Church makes explicit what is implicit in the heavenly proclamation. We have here a sure ground of unity. We have here the pillar and foundation of truth (see First Timothy 3:15).
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