Moule: unity

Saturday, December 3, 2016
Commemoration of Francis Xavier, Apostle of the Indies, Missionary, 1552
Meditation:
[Jesus:] “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”
—John 17:22-23 (ESV)
Quotation:
Poor and unsatisfying are the results where “Unity,” “Corporate Life,” and the like are the perpetual watchwords, but where they bear a primary reference to order, function, and succession in the ministry of the Church. One can not but ask the question sometimes, when contemplating phenomena of an ardent ecclesiasticism, is this the worthy goal of ten thousand efforts, of innumerable assertions of “catholicity”—this spirit and tone, these enterprises and actions, so little akin either to the love or to the simplicity, the openness, of the heavenly Gospel? Suppose such unity to be attained to the uttermost, beyond even the dreams of Rome: would it contribute at all to making “the world believe that the Father hath sent the Son, and hath loved us even as He loved Him”?
… Handley Moule (1841-1920), Ephesians Studies, New York: A. C. Armstrong, 1900, p. 184-185 (see the book)
See also John 17:22-23; Matt. 9:10-13; John 14:20; 1 John 3:24; 4:14
Quiet time reflection:
Lord, You are the center of all that happens. CQOD Blog email RSS
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