The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost: Unity in Charity and Truth

The call to unity in the Spirit
The Epistle of this Sunday speaks with clarity and urgency: “walk worthy of the vocation to which you are called, with all humility and meekness, with patience, bearing with one another in charity, careful to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:1-3). The Tridentine liturgy arranges its Propers to reinforce this summons: the Introit confesses God’s justice, the Collect petitions for purity of mind, and the Gradual blesses the people chosen by the Lord. The liturgy is not content to speak of unity in abstraction; it seeks to form in us the virtues by which unity is preserved.

Humility as the foundation of unity
St Augustine explains that there is “something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something in pride which debases it.”¹ Pride, he writes elsewhere, builds the earthly city out of self-love, even to the contempt of God, while humility builds the heavenly city out of the love of God, even to the contempt of self.² Unity cannot endure in the presence of pride, for pride isolates; but humility, meekness, and patience make space for the other. These are the necessary virtues of a people called to live as one Body in Christ.

The law of love fulfilled in Christ
In the Gospel (Matt. 22:34-46), the Pharisees seek to test Christ, asking which is the greatest commandment. He answers with the Shema of Israel — to love the Lord God with all one’s heart, soul, and mind — and joins to it the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself. “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” St Thomas Aquinas, in the Catena Aurea, preserves the patristic witness that the second commandment is “like” the first because true love of neighbor cannot exist apart from love of God.³ St John Chrysostom, preaching on Matthew, stresses that Christ bound the two together to show that in their unity the entire law is fulfilled.⁴

Unity as reflection of the Trinity
St Paul lists seven unities: one Body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all (Eph. 4:4-6). The Fathers perceived in this a reflection of the Blessed Trinity: diversity without division, unity without confusion. St John Chrysostom warns in his homilies on Ephesians that nothing so provokes God’s anger as schism, and nothing pleases Him so much as concord, for sin “loosens” the bond of charity.⁵ The liturgy, therefore, is not merely a gathering for worship but the manifestation of communion — a visible sign of the invisible unity wrought by the Spirit.

Guarding the bond of peace
Unity must be defended. St Paul’s admonition to be “careful” shows that peace is fragile, easily broken by selfishness, impatience, or ambition. The Collect of the Mass, praying that the faithful may “avoid the contagion of the devil,” names the true enemy of unity: the divisive spirit of pride. Here again Augustine is our teacher: humility raises the heart to God, pride drags it down to the self. The struggle for unity is spiritual combat.

Conversion to charity and concord
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost invites us to examine ourselves. Do we live in humility, patience, and meekness? Do we yield our pride, forgive quickly, and prefer the other? Do we love our neighbor in God, or do we prefer ourselves to God? The liturgy itself is the school of unity, for in chanting as one, in hearing the Word together, and in partaking of one Bread and one Chalice, the Church is formed anew into Christ’s Body. What the Apostle commands and the Gospel declares, the liturgy makes real: that we may love God wholly, love our neighbor truly, and so preserve in humility and charity the unity bestowed by the Spirit.

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1. Augustine, City of God, Book XIV, ch. 13, “there is, therefore, something in humility…pride…debases it.” [New Advent edition]
2. Augustine, City of God, Book XIV, ch. 28, “two cities have been formed by two loves…” [CCEL edition]
3. Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea on Matthew 22:35-40. [Isidore of Seville Edition]
4. John Chrysostom, Homily 71 on Matthew (on Matt. 22). [New Advent edition]
5. John Chrysostom, Homily 9 on Ephesians, on unity and charity. [New Advent edition]