The sacrament of unity

Pope Leo met Margaret Karram, President of the Focolare in September 2025. Source: here

Last weekend we had the opportunity to attend the annual summer ‘Mariapolis’ of the Focolare movement in Ireland.  ‘Mariapolis’ means ‘City of Mary’ and stems from the initial annual holiday retreat gatherings of the developing Focolare movement founded in Northern Italy in the 1940s by Chiara Lubich and her  companions. The movement spread across the globe in the following years.  I was actively involved for some years as a lay person in the Movement here in Ireland and stay in touch with it still.  A key emphasis of its spirituality is that unity for which Jesus prayed:

I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  (John 17:20-21)

The central importance of mutual love as the basis for building the ‘City of Mary’ echoes a theme of St Augustine in ‘The City of God’ and which has been taken up recently by Pope Leo XIV in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas,:

Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. 

Pope Leo sums up the role of the Eucharist in helping us to build a civilisation of love in this fragmented world (#88):

For the Christian community, solidarity finds its source in the mystery of Christ and is nourished by the Eucharist. Solidarity emerges from communion in faith and the Sacraments: Baptism and Confirmation unite us in Christ, so that we may become one Body and one Spirit, one heart and one soul (cf. Eph 4:4; Acts 4:32). The Eucharist, which is the sacrament of unity, nurtures our belonging to the Body of Christ and teaches us how to share. The diverse sensibilities present in the Church and the strong convictions that animate each person are a source of richness if they remain anchored in the certainty that unity is a gift received and a responsibility to be fulfilled.