Real Monasterio de Guadalupe

PEACE AND WELL

Daily reflection.

19/5/2021

Gospel of saint John 17: 11-19:

May they be one like us. Jesus asks for the unity of those who are to be his disciples, of the whole Church. Many are the holy Fathers who have dealt with the unity of the Church.

Saint Cyprian says: «This unity of the Church is foreshadowed in the person of Christ by the Holy Spirit in the Song of Songs, when he says:« Only one is my dove, my beautiful one is unique from her mother, her chosen one »(6.8). Whoever does not keep this unity of the Church, is he going to believe that he keeps the unity of the faith? Whoever stubbornly resists the Church, who abandons the chair of Peter, on which the Church is founded, can he trust that he is in the Church? » (On the unity of the Church, 5).

Also, today Saint Irenaeus tells us that: «No matter how diverse the places, the members of the Church profess the same faith and one faith, which was transmitted by the Apostles to their disciples» (Treatise on Heresies 1,10). Christ never speaks of Churches, but of the Church, of his Church and for her he prayed at the Last Supper.

Fr. Antonio Majeesh George, OFM.

Real Monasterio de Santa María de Guadalupe (Cáceres).