Within the framework of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Friar Enrique Eguiarte guides us today towards the heart of communion: for Saint Augustine, without charity there is no unity, nor true peace.
Unity and charity: Saint Augustine’s key to peace in the Church
There can be no unity if there is no love. Love “believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13:6). It is necessary to love unity so much as to avoid division and separation through selfishness or seeking one’s own interests. For Saint Augustine, there are three elements that can never be separated, and if one is given, the other two must necessarily be given (s. 154A, 6). Unity, charity, and peace. If one is missing, the others are missing, and if one is present, the other two are necessarily present. That is why in one of the last sermons preached by the elderly Saint Augustine, he invited us to seek charity, which is the “sweet and healthy bond of souls”; a bond without which “the rich is poor, and with which the poor is rich” (s. 350, 3). A love that is strong “in hard trials” and is very “joyful in good works” (s. 350, 3). It is necessary to pray to grow more and more in love and charity in order to build unity in the Church.
