The octave of Christian unity begins today: they are days of special petition to the Holy Trinity, in which we ask for the fulfillment of the words of our Lord at the Last Supper: “Holy Father, keep in your name those you have given me, so that all be one as we are one." Urged on by the Holy Spirit, we are getting ready to live the octave in a unity of desires with the entire Church. We do so, full of supernatural hope, because we know that it has to be the Holy Spirit who moves the hearts of all those who believe in Christ and who will bring about the perfect unity of all Christians in the one Church.
Our prayer follows the path marked out by the priestly prayer of Jesus Christ, on the evening of his Passion. When the time had come for him to pass from this world to the Father, our Lord prays for a holy and compact Church with a unity which points up its beauty, for the supreme and highest principle of the unity of the Church is her resemblance with the mystery of the Trinity of Persons, and the Unity of only one God the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.
Like the Good Shepherd who gives his life for his sheep, Jesus Christ prays for the unity of his flock. For years he has guided his disciples, he has looked after them one by one; but he knows that the enemy is constantly trying to snatch the sheep and scatter the flock, and his Heart suffers, knowing that many will waver and abandon the sheep-fold.
The prayer of Christ also extends to those who have never been counted amongst his followers, those who never even knew about his flock: “I have other sheep that are not of this sheepfold, and I also have to bring them, and they will hear my voice and will form only one flock with one shepherd."
With this octave, the Church wants us to take one more step in the identification of our sentiments with those of Jesus. Being well aware of the vicissitudes of the Church throughout history, and conscious of the weakness of the human heart, so easily swayed by error, egoism, discord, and desire for power, our prayer has to be more intense, uniting itself to that of the Good Shepherd: “as you, Father, in me and I in You, that they be united in us..., that they be one as we are one. I in them and You in me, so that they be united as one, and so that the world might know you have sent me and that you have loved them as you have loved me."
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