Monday, January 24, 2022

 Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales, bishop and doctor of the Church

(II Samuel 5:1-7.10; Mark 3:22-30)

With the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul tomorrow another Week of Christian Unity comes to an end.  Once, not very long ago, Christian unity seemed a near reality.  Statements of agreements were signed.  Pastors exchanged pulpits.  More recently, however, unity seems more like an automobile without wheels – more remote than near possibility.  St. Francis de Sales, however, experienced much more difficult ecumenical relations.  His virtue may provide a roadmap out of the impasse.

Francis lived in France at the end of the sixteenth century.  The country was experiencing civil unrest between the Catholic majority and the large Calvinist population. Francis was something of a novelty, a soft-spoken scholar characterized by humility and deference.  He was named bishop of Geneva but could not reside there because of the hostile Calvinist government.  In a city of France twenty-two miles to the south he worked among the people promoting spirituality of the laity. 

In today’s gospel Jesus says that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”  Divisions have plagued Christianity since the beginning.  This reality does not prove Jesus wrong.  It does require that the strongman – in the gospel Satan; in the Church, arrogance – be arrested.  Then the Church will be able to complete its mission of bringing Christ to the whole world.

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