On the night before his arrest, Christ prayed that his followers would be one.

In the Gospel of John, he prays not only for his disciples but for those who would come after them:

I do not pray for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:20-21)

Christ’s final public prayer was a prayer for unity. It stands at the very heart of the Church’s mission.

As Pope Paul VI later warned in Evangelii Nuntiandi:

The power of evangelization will find itself considerably diminished if those who proclaim the Gospel are divided among themselves in all sorts of ways. (§77)

Christian unity is not a secondary concern in the life of the Church. It reflects the very credibility of the Gospel itself.

The Second Vatican Council expressed the same insight with striking clarity. The Church, it taught, “is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race.” (Lumen Gentium §1)

A Fragmented Age

Yet Christianity today often appears anything but unified.

We live in a fragmented age. Shared institutions and common life have eroded. The “third spaces” that once sustained community — parishes, civic organizations, neighborhood associations — have thinned out. More and more of life now unfolds online.

We are constantly connected, yet often without real communion. 

The Christian world itself has not been immune to this wider fragmentation.

Churches remain separated from one another, and Christians are often divided internally by theological, cultural, and political conflicts.

The separation between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church — traced to the East-West Schism — remains one of the most enduring examples of these divisions.

The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century further fractured Western Christianity, giving rise to competing confessions, ecclesial structures, and theological traditions that remain divided to this day.

Yet even in the midst of these divisions, a deeper unity remains among those who confess Christ. As Pope Leo XIV recently said during an ecumenical prayer service:

We are one! We already are! Let us recognize it, experience it and make it visible!

The Christian proclamation from the beginning has been precisely this: that Christ came to gather humanity into one.

Even the shape of the Cross points toward this reality. Its arms stretch outward, gathering the world from east to west and from north to south. As Christ himself says:

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. (John 12:32)

Divisions Within the Church

Within the Catholic Church herself, however, divisions have emerged over authority, doctrine, and the interpretation of tradition. Debates over the reception of the Second Vatican Council have sometimes hardened into enduring tensions and warring camps. This is not inevitable, this is disorder within the Body of Christ.

One notable example of these tensions can be seen in the situation surrounding the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX).

Founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the society entered into open conflict with Rome in 1988 when Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal mandate — an event that John Paul II referred to as schismatic.

Recently, the society has indicated that it intends to consecrate additional bishops without papal mandate, widely seen as repeating the action of 1988. The prefect for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Víctor Manuel Fernández, has warned that such consecrations would incur automatic excommunication.

At the same time, there are steep divides even among Catholics who remain fully in communion with the Church — between conservatives and liberals, between traditionalists and the institutional Church, and between competing visions of how the faith should be lived in the modern world.

Part of the problem is a narrowing of vision that forgets the true meaning of the Church’s catholicity. The word itself — kata holos (καθ’ ὅλος) — means “according to the whole.” 

When that vision narrows, the faith can easily be reduced tot he boundaries of one’s own custom or comfort, undermining communion and distorting the Church’s universal identity.

Communion at the Heart of the Faith

At its deepest level, the Christian faith is about communion. There is a reason we call the Eucharist we share Holy Communion and why, during the liturgy, we exchange the sign of peace before approaching the altar. Christ teaches that if you bring your gift to the altar and remember that your brother has something against you, you must first go and be reconciled (Matt. 5:23-24). Communion with Christ presupposes communion with one another.

The life of God revealed in Christ is the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the Church exists to draw humanity into that divine life.

Heaven itself is communion with God and with the saints.

The Church Exists to Begin that Communion Now

The communion we live in the Church is a foretaste of that final reality. If we do not learn to live communion here — through reconciliation, charity, and unity — we should not expect to enjoy it there.

As Saint Catherine of Siena famously wrote:

All the way to heaven is heaven.

And as C.S. Lewis observed in the Great Divorce:

Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you…either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature.

Christian life, then, is not merely preparation for heaven — it is the beginning of it.

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Image:”Jesus praying in the Gethsemane garden..” (CC BY 2.0) by wwwuppertal