 Thank you for the pavonka for your kind words of introduction it gave me a sense already if I live well and they think about my beatification I know some who can be witnesses to that and there are halves of this to say but very very grateful to you for this invitation to be part of this of this retreat if I had known about this as a retreat the way I know now I probably would have you know subscribed to it myself and registered for it but glad also to have been invited yes as father said I have been on this campus before and that was with father's canon at one point with the renewal ministries some of you may know and there was to do ministry here part of it was with a charismatic renewal and then and then and then you know everything happened and been in room there's a little bit less time to travel a lot with the movement but I'm glad for this invitation and I'm just hoping that my sharing would prove you know we'll make you all come in and you'll stay here very useful and I hope will not be anything that will cause you regret and since this is about you all had your dinner I also hope that there will be no indigestion caused to anybody from from from what I'll be I'll be saying to you so I have been invited to talk about this unity this unity of course in the context that has just been presented to us about unity in the Holy Spirit and how we all invited to live this unity in the Holy Spirit but invite us specifically to look at this unit in the world in the church and how we can find solutions to this unity only in God I like this afternoon in my small sharing brief sharing with you to look at the issue of this unity contrast it with unity and see the big forms of this unity in our world and in our church and try to suggest the way of looking at this unity in a way that it can be useful and it can be profitable in the sense that we can find in Christ Jesus the key to resolving this unity and living in unity and so my dear friends when one Nigerian author decided to face the challenges of modernity in his native land in Nigeria he took a quote from the English poet William Yeats and said turning and turning in the widening guy the Falcon cannot hear the Falcon anymore turns fall apart and me anarchy is lose upon the earth yes turns do fall apart when the center cannot hold and when the center cannot hold then there is really no unity and when there's no unity and this unity takes over then everything crumbles everything falls apart this is not just a situation of somebody in Nigeria facing the challenges of modernity but this incidentally is also a very common characteristic of our human history this unity very many of us look at the book of Genesis and we interpret that as God having created everything established humanity as one common human family and so a crucial characteristic of the human family is its unity unity in God the father and God the creator but then as you notice shortly thereafter the scriptures which affirm the central unity of God and everything that God created pretty soon begins to talk about separation disunities and breaks up so God who created everything in unity then calls only Abraham and leaves the rest and calls Abraham and makes him gives him a mission then from the children of Abraham Isaac will be picked up and the rest will be left and then Jacob is picked up Isaac so that all these separations as it were introduced a series of disunities in the way God works our salvation and that's just what I want to focus on and see again in the same scriptures what kind of solution we can find in solving disunity disunities which characterize the part of our salvation and we will not be the only ones to have an issue that disunities in scriptures it's already an observation that was made in antiquity in Greeks the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle struggle with the same idea and indeed at one point while they affirm the God as the common creator of everybody we'll still go ahead and say but the barbarians are not the same as the Greeks and so there there is a difference and then Plato would say the pious and the holy people are not the same as the wicked and on your unrighteous people so invariably it's as if humanity is always caught up in the tendency to always create separation disunite and create groups within its system that is not only the case looking at this feature than this evening I like to do something very simple and basic using a method that I suppose is known to very many of us it's a method that was made popular in the church by a Belgian cardinal called Joseph Leon Cardin it is a popular method about see judge and act so I like to see the phenomenon of disunity in the world and in the church then I'll try to evaluate this phenomenon disunity in the church and in the world in the light of scripture and from that try to draw some conclusions about how we can deal with disunity how disunity enables us to appreciate God's plan of salvation in the world and in our lives and so disunity in the world and around us it's everywhere it's politically motivated it's ideologically motivated it's motivated by new waves of nationalism in Europe it is motivated by new trends of emerging nationhood and it's more than motivated by several factors presently in Europe the biggest concern for the European Union it's not its membership but their emergence of nationalism of groups wanting to emphasize on their national identity to their disregard of others this is a challenge politically motivated and sometimes supported by very vigorous ideological currents it is a form of disunity a form of disunity of the human race another tendency that we face very often and commonly in our world it's also there's this unity that is brought forth by the emergence of different states and the reference to them even in scripture Plato would already say that there is no way that the Greek is like the barbarian or neither is a German like the Italian or the French like the Slovakian and so forth so the differentiations are there that these unities are created but when we bring them to scripture and try to understand this feature then we find out that before we start looking at what scripture what help scripture can provide us with in understanding this feature we within our own ranks as Christians can also describe several crucial periods of disunity and separations in the Old Testament why did God's people become Samaritan and Jews they used to be one people but the rule of Jeroboam and his political hubris led them to the creation of the North and when Assyria did attack in 721 and makes a population with foreigners the Jews in the south or the people of Judah consider the North as unclean and not worthy anymore to be considered Jews and so Jews and Samaritans evolved till the day of Jesus we recognize how irreconcilable the tension and the divisions were beyond this division in the Old Testament a very small minor one also did occur when some Jews migrated to Alexandria in the Babylonian exile and so part of them was left there as opposed to the Jews in Palestine another situation of this unity and separation but in our own day in the Christian church we recognize a big separation that took place between the Roman Catholic Church the Western and the Eastern Church the grayskism of 1091 that is left to the present day division between the orthodox church and the Catholic Church such a separation is so crucial because it means that between the two communions or the two churches communion is not difficult to describe and to fashion we know what Pope Francis is doing with Pope Petra Bartholomew but the division and they're still there another big division within the Christian church was written about the reformation again a big division within the Christian church at big the big instance of this unity which led to a splintering of several other divisions within the Christian community to what we have today again efforts have been made to heal such divisions then finally we can talk about current present day division like the threat of another schism in the Lefebvre movement that is coming up strong within the church again the Holy Feud the professor is dealing gingerly with the situation but the threat is still there and not to talk about old Catholics here and there in a very local level we can also talk about several divisions in the church I mean when news about four cardinals dissenting from the Pope's and secret count on later Amore Letizia that also suggests to people that there is division or when the Pope comes out with a teaching and then some theologians have reason to dissent the impression also giving out is that there is division also within the church or where in any bishop's conference there's position the public common position has so some dissenting voice among other members of the conference still there is a talk about this unity in the church so it is with us in several cases and several ways to the point that it can also become a personal experience of each one of us when distractions tear us apart so that it's difficult for us to to to kind of concentrate and bring our own resources to get to be able to pray then we also talk about disunited and torn at the heart and within our own souls so this unit is a very common phenomenon and common feature with us and so how may we deal with it or how can we deal with it my dear friend is like this I like to suggest three steps several things in human history follow the same dynamics with which he says settled and answer the question in the Old Testament about marriage we can describe the fit the face when God created everything then we can describe an era or period when it was dominated by a son and a curses and then we can describe a final phase of everything being redeemed in Christ and that is also the situation with disunity and division and separation in our world and in the church in the first eleven chapters of Genesis everything there is created assuming this unity of everything unity and three ways the one God the creator of heaven and earth is the father of all true this God created created humanity in his own image and likeness and Darwin on them all common dignity so that when he created man and woman and brought them together to generate their own species and kind the one thing that they always had to transmit was the dignity of the human person by reason of the fact that they all created in the image and the likeness of God when later on with the birth of brothers Cain and Abel we have a diversity this diversity still could not obliterate and do away with the common quality that they all have of being all created in the image and likeness of God so in brotherhood we are invited to rate to reconcile diversity with unity sharing the same image and likeness of God brother still are different so diversity in itself is not opposed to unity brotherhood is the signal of that two brothers are not the same although they come from the same womb that's why the Greek we call them Adelphos from the same womb and imagine from the same womb they have the same dignity they have the same character so that may also makes them makes them one before before before God and then when God decided to place the first human beings is created in the garden again he ensured that these would also work the garden in a sense of unity solidarity so the common sense that we get about God and the human race in the first 11 chapters of scriptures is its unity by the unity that was quickly destroyed by the incidence of sin and then five fold curses the first two curses were given to serpent and given to Adam and the land on which he had to perform the third curse was given to Cain when he shed his blood as broad and God say curse be the earth on account of the blood of your brother that it is swallowed the fourth curse would be when Ham or Canaan went to you know discover his father naked and came to tell the brothers to laugh at him and so there the brother waking from the stupor of wine that he had drunk then impose a curse on Canaan and his brother and his children and the fifth curse to be inferred was at the tower of Babel when again humanity was scattered and different languages and different kinds so the unity that character as creation was dismantled by sin and curses till again God steps in to save the situation and he saved the situation by the call of Abraham if before the call of Abraham the world had been dominated by five curses the call of Abraham is dominated by five blessings five times that God mentioned blessing when he calls Abraham as if in the call of Abraham God was overturning everything that had been that had gone wrong in the beginning and so that is one separation but a separation that is meant to create the unity of the rest because when Abraham is called in that separation then he's told in you all the families of the earth shall find blessing so this is a separation with difference it's a separation that leads to reintegration the blessing of all of humanity in Abraham and this logic continues all through scripture till it comes for fulfillment in Christ Jesus in whom all of humanity is brought together again so the series of separations that the series of disunities that we see in scripture all become disunities which God makes use of to refashion the unity that must characterize the human race it's a disunity with the scope this unity with view to refashioning the unity of the human race so that these unit is we find in scripture with a choice of a 12 apostles from the rest of humanity Jesus tells us that he preaches in parables but in private he would explain it to his 12 apostles another disunity but this is done so that the 12 apostles will become the bearers of message for the rest of humanity so in the scriptures we witness a series of the sweet unities or disruptions which are automatically meant to refashion and to create a unity that must belong to all of us so that's how God works it is on the unity of the human race and unity of all of humankind and this is the crucial and the concrete way God does this work of unity at this point I think I'm going to be leaking to you a little bit of a small a small subject matter I worked on in the past as a thesis and it is this bear for your attention just briefly an American and a Genean we are fundamentally opposed an American cannot be a Genean a Genean cannot be an American right a Jew okay an Israelite and non-Israelite are fundamentally opposed and non-Israelite and an Israelite cannot you know swap positions so an Israelite and an Ammonite or Gibbonite or Amalakite or Babylonian this all stand in fundamental opposition and God did that by making Israel his people choosing Abraham Abraham and his children but God doesn't leave Israel in this fundamental opposition because God then decide to call Israel my people the people of Yahweh the moment God calls Israel people of Yahweh the detention and the opposition is mitigated it just means that since Israel's identity now is based on the fact that he is a people of God whenever God will decide to make any other group his people there is therefore the possibility of coming together this is the logic of God Israel was separated at one point but once God made Israel his people any other nation that God will make his people means that they can now relate with Israel the fundamental opposition is then removed and this is what has happened in God calling all the humanity all the races on earth his people and making this come to pass through Jesus is dead and on the on the cross God is removed all the fundamental oppositions that separate humanity that's why Paul in his letter to the Galatians will say in Christ he says that those there's no more the Greek or the Hebrew or slave or free man because in God calling all of us his people there are no fundamental oppositions anymore the unity of the human race is reestablished and it's reestablished in Christ Jesus and he shares this with us in the power of his own Holy Spirit so rebate in Jesus now it's become a way of becoming God's people and in becoming God's people then that this unity and the obstacles that existed between the human race it's all it's all taken away they all crumble at the prospect of being God's people and so the unity of human race and nature is restored and it is stored in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the death and the resurrection of Christ so Jesus would say he's the first born of many brothers he's now the first born of many brothers and through the spirit that he bestows on others others are them made you know his own brothers making them his people and fashion the unity that characterizes us as God's people and so when Peter goes to the house of Cornelius he is hesitant about opening up to Cornelius thinking still that this is a Jew and a non-Jew until God takes the lead and makes the Holy Spirit pour on Cornelius and Esaldo and Peter said if the Lord himself has taken the lead yes that's what the Lord has done the Lord is shown Peter that it's no more a question of Jews and non-Jews Greeks and non-Greeks it's not a question of being people of God and when we are people of God in the Holy Spirit the unity of the human family as God's creation is restored is refashioned and that's what we gather to celebrate the unity that God has fashioned out of all of us in the power of the Holy Spirit no more because of our particular identities and particular origins and particular races but by the reason of fact that in Christ Jesus the first born of very many brothers all of us in becoming children of God are now invited to a life of communion life of unity which was the design of God right from the building of creation so the unity your we we gathered here this next few days to reflect upon is established this way it's a unity that recognizes the fact that we all different from different places but it's a unity that is established because the Lord invites us to first become His people and in becoming His people it doesn't then matter what fundamental oppositions we used to live in all of those oppositions crumble and in Christ Jesus we become like it said in our brothers and sisters all brothers and sisters in Christ the first one of very many brothers in the power of the Holy Spirit so it is my own prayer for you this next few days in your meeting and pray over here that you discover what you have what we have all become in the Holy Spirit the new brotherhood that has been fashioned for us in the Holy Spirit and the new unity of being children of God that has been fashioned for us if God at the dawn of creation created us as one family soon and cases disrupted the design and plan of God God did not abandon us but picking and separating us if he was divided us or more he created a pathway again for refashioning us into the family of God and that is ultimately what Christ has come to do for us it is no more Israelite but Israel as people of God and when Israel is a people of God then anybody else whom God makes his people then can come into relationship with Israel that is our salvation and that's how the promises made to Abraham come to all of us and reach us so my prayer is that this unity that we celebrate in the Holy Spirit this next few days will be a unity that will spy and kind of inspire all of us to discover the personal unit is that we must all discover within our own lives in Christ Jesus everything has been reconciled with the Father and that includes the very many differences that exist in our lives so my prayer for all of you may your three or four days over here be one enlightened and strengthened by the God and the Holy Spirit so we discover the part to unity in his church in the world and in the life of each one of us thank you