Dear Saints,

It’s been said that there’s only one thing God can’t be, and that’s “not God.” He is perfect integrity itself: everything he does is consistent within himself. In other words, there is not the slightest discrepancy in his character.

That’s perfection beyond the comprehension of creatures marked by original sin. And yet, as members of Christ’s one body, that is precisely our individual and corporate vocation. We are called to act with the unity that is inherent to God himself.

That’s no easy feat, but it’s crucial to God’s plans for his world. It’s no surprise, for example, that President Abraham Lincoln chose this Sunday’s Gospel to articulate the crux of our nation’s most crucial pivot point in his famous “House Divided” speech. If that’s true for a country, how much more so for Jesus’s followers engaged in the work of building his kingdom?

It’s just reality that whenever two or three are gathered in His name, there will be conflict. We’re only human, after all. But “only human” is all we need to be, because there’s someone else with us in those moments, and he is the source of unity himself. He is there to gather us to himself. The more we strive to hear and heed his will, the greater our enjoyment of - and more fruitful our participation in - that gathering.

Christ’s Peace,

Father Daniel

δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ