The quest for unity of life

We are reminded of this duty to pursue the ideal of unity of life in that gospel episode where Christ told the crowds and his disciples that while the leading Jews had taken their seat on the chair of Moses, they should do and observe what these leading Jews would tell them, but not to follow their example. (cfr. Mt 23,1-12) The reason? “For they preach but they do not practice.”

This, sadly, is a fact of life. We ourselves often can be accused of the same thing. We can be very good at preaching but poor in practice. We can be excellent in terms of theory and doctrine, but the aspect of morality is another story. Yes, it’s part of our human condition to fall into some forms of inconsistency and hypocrisy in our whole life!

But we should not be overly worried about this phenomenon. It’s not the end of the world. We can always do something about it. And in a sense, our whole life is precisely a matter of how we can achieve consistency and unity among the different aspects and dimensions of our life --the spiritual and material, the temporal and eternal, the theoretical and practical, the personal and social, etc.

What God expects from us is that we struggle against this lifelong predicament of ours. As long as there is some struggle, God would already be happy with us. We are not expected to perfect everything, because it will only be God who will do that for us, but also, with us.