We are told in the beginning of the Book of Genesis, that there was a unity and perfection within the created order. Satan introduced a fear into humanity, the only species able to freely choose, that God wasn't enough for them. They would need to supplement what God lacked. Fear bred sin. Sin introduced division. Division started between humanity and God, then between man and woman, then between the ground and man, then between brother and brother, then between man and the animal kingdom, and so forth. Sin's natural fruit is division. Sin pits parties against each other.
In sending His Son, God the Father sought to restore that relationship between us and Himself. In His Son creating a Church, He shows us that He wants us to act in union with each other. Jesus likens His Church to a body of which He is the head. On the night before He died, He prayed that we might be one as He and the Father are one. Yet early on, sin introduced division into that early Church. St. Paul wrote his letters to the Corinthians to dissuade them from cultivating such division. Human hubris displayed in the adaptation of heresy after heresy, schism after schism into the Body of Christ has shattered Christianity into tens of thousands of pieces. We, who are supposed to model the behavior of Christ find ourselves unable or unwilling to model the behavior and the world suffers for it.
In our culture, we seem to now have a love affair with division. We have allowed the demonic to find and exploit any and all divisions there can be. Look at the fault lines that constantly erupt in our society: divisions based in race, gender, culture, politics, religion, economics, and anything else we can imagine. We will even create falsehoods to further more division. We have become a society that makes the Lord of the Flies look like the Von Trapp family. It infects every avenue of life without mercy, draining any avenue of joy we might have into yet another scorched earth battlefield where opposing parties cry 'give no quarter!' to their perceived enemies. Gone is "Father, may they be one and you and I are one, "(John 17:11) and in its place we now hear, "Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!" (Shakespeare: Julius Caesar)
The devil hates us. He always has and always will. His hate is born from his fear, so it is his fear with which he infects us with. He breeds division because a divided humanity is easy to manipulate. An enemy manipulated is an enemy defeated. His cancer has spread throughout our culture, he knows exactly where to attack.
First, he divides the family. In Genesis, he sets the woman and man against each other. He sets sibling against sibling. The family unit is a grave danger to him. The more discord he can accomplish, the better. No institution in the Christian west has been more attacked than the family. The family is the most basic building block of any society or group. If you wish to weaken the group, weaken the family. Convince men and women that children are burdensome and onerous while convincing them to use the bond of sexuality in a way that objectifies the other! Check! Convince women that motherhood is beneath them. Check! Breed a mistrust of authority even within the family unit. Check! Convince men it is okay to abandon their children to pursue a self gratifying lifestyle! Check! Convince people that the death of unwanted children is desirable and just! Check! Make divorce easy. Check! Make birth control the normal. Check! Regularly mock parents, especially dads in entertainment. Check!
Fracture the family and it is only a matter of time before every other institution falls like dominoes. If we can turn the family on each other, then one can exacerbate other divisions. Politics has rarely been about union. Nowadays, it has become a nasty blood-sport where the winner is irrelevant and the divisions so grinds the mechanism of the body politic to a screeching halt that even the most basic operations of government are stopped. Once the infection has been introduced, it is hard for it not to infect any member of the body. Good heavens, we can't even play a football game without it becoming a moment of contention!
All of this division is toxic. Some will cite Jesus saying He will be a cause for division as a platform to justify their own introductions of strife and disarray as a Godly quest, except He was talking about he division between those who believe and don't believe...not among those who say they believe!
All of the nurturing of division will produce no good fruit. It is exhausting and infuriating to have such division. Even within our Church we have divisions based in ideological camps, even incorporating the divisions we see elsewhere. Mass has become a battlefield in many parishes; it certainly has in the social media sphere. Every time I see these posts, I think, "Good heavens, if I weren't already a Catholic, I would want no part of Catholicism if this is how they treat each other." It is one thing to point out doctrinal error, it is quite another to assassinate the character of the individual making the error. What does all our public infighting say to those who do not believe?
As the Body of Christ, we are to stand with Christ our head. His way is our way. Period. It is when we want our way, believing that Jesus' way isn't enough, that we get into problems and scandalize others. In Christ, to paraphrase St Paul, there is no "Jew nor Greek, slave nor free"...or any of the other man-made distinction we use to create rifts and tribes. As a Catholic Church, we have members of every culture and race, of every socioeconomic class, of every country and people! We have people who struggle with every imaginable sin there is. If we are to bind the wounded and draw together the lost; it will be by not merely presenting a united front, but by living a united front; not looking for what separates us and picking at it until it is gushing wound. We should be working towards that prayer of Christ, "May they be one" and not allow ourselves to eat nor serve up the demonic fruit that only brings division.
If we are to be effective witnesses to the world, we cannot look like the world. Their hate and division can't be adopted by us. We have such a great opportunity here. Where the world is isolating individuals, we should be able to say, "Come here...find rest from turmoil here!" We have that perfect opportunity to say, "Come here...we don't care what race you are, we don't care how poor or wealthy you are...and so on." We can say, "Come here, we will recognize your dignity and humanity...we will help you rise above the sins that enslave you." We can cry out, "Come here, lost sheep...we have a home for you." We can't do that and support the melee of division the world delights in.
We cannot offer the same demonic fruit the world does.
People must be able to see that difference clearly.
It starts in our families and our parish family.
We must be different.
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