If our perception of who God is incorrect, we will not live correctly. Nothing matters more than our knowledge of Christ. In light of recent events, this has very practical consequences for the way we treat others and ourselves. The disunity – the lack of communion in our country and world, made clear by recent events – has many causes. But taken from the highest point of view, it is the result of our living as if God did not exist or as if he was a God uninterested in our world - the exact opposite of what we hear in the Gospel (God so loved the world... Jn 3:16) Communion in our human family, if it is to be lasting, must begin with our communion with God. This comes about by entrusting ourselves to Him. Going to him in love and realizing that he loves you and me and every other person he has ever created with a love beyond all our imagining. We will only do so if we believe God to be love.

"Nothing could be more untrue than the often-repeated statement that we all worship the same God; or that other, that whatever we worship is the same. Nothing matters more than having a true knowledge of Christ. We become what our conception of Christ is: God made us in His own likeness, but we have an extraordinary power of changing ourselves into the likeness of the idols we make, of those caricatures of God which we set up on the altars of egoism and worship. In the degree of falseness of our conception of God, we restrict and narrow our interests and sympathies; we grow in intolerance and hardness or in a flabbiness which turns to a rot of sweetness like a diabetes of the soul. In the degree of the truth of our conception of Him, our minds grow broader, deeper, and warmer; our hearts grow wiser and kinder; our humour deeper and more tender; we become more aware of the wonder of life; our senses become more sensitive; our sympathies stronger; our capacity for giving and receiving greater; our minds are more radiant with a burning light, and the light is Christ." C. Houselander (1944). The Reed of God. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press. 130

Unity #peace #love #communion #justice