These reflections explore an ancient question that psychology has circled without resolving: what would it mean for the fractured parts of a human being to become genuinely unified? The readings today speak of oneness — not as doctrinal abstraction but as a precise description of an inner event. What follows is neither theology nor devotional commentary but an independent meditation on what these texts might be pointing toward when read as instructions for psychological transformation.
First reading
From the Book of Sirach — Sirach 15:1-6 (World English Bible)
He that fears the Lord will do this;
And he that has possession of the law will obtain her.
And as a mother shall she meet him, And receive him as a wife married in her virginity.
With bread of understanding will she feed him, And give him water of wisdom to drink.
He will be stayed upon her, and will not be moved;
And will rely upon her, and will not be confounded.
And she will exalt him above his neighbors;
And in the midst of the congregation will she open his mouth.
He will inherit joy, and a crown of gladness, And an everlasting name.
Gospel
From the Gospel of John — John 17:20-26
Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
That they all may be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that you have sent me.
And the glory which you gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
I in them, and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that you have sent me, and have loved them, as you have loved me.
Father, I will that they also, whom you have given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which you have given me: for you lovedst me before the foundation of the world.
O righteous Father, the world hath not known you: but I have known you, and these have known that you have sent me.
And I have declared unto them your name, and will declare it:
that the love wherewith you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.
— Interpretation —
Let us begin with what is strange in these passages, because what is strange is usually what is most important.
In the reading from Sirach, Wisdom is described as a woman — a mother who meets a man, a bride who receives him. She feeds him with “bread of understanding” and gives him “water of wisdom to drink.” We have encountered this language before, this curious insistence in scripture that understanding is food, that wisdom is drink. It is not metaphor in the decorative sense. It is precise. The inner life of a man requires nourishment just as the body does, and the nourishment it requires is of a specific kind: understanding. Not information, not opinion, not the accumulation of facts about the world — but understanding, which is something else entirely.
Understanding, in this sense, is what happens when a truth enters a man not merely through his intellect but through his feeling and his will simultaneously. It feeds him. He is sustained by it. He can stand on it. The passage says “he will be stayed upon her, and will not be moved.” This is an extraordinary description of what it feels like when genuine understanding arrives. One is no longer tossed about. One has ground beneath one’s feet — not the ground of certainty in the ordinary dogmatic sense, but the ground of something received and known at a depth beyond argument.
Now we must turn to the Gospel, because here something far more radical is being said, and it requires the quietest possible attention.
Christ is praying — not for his immediate disciples alone, but for all who will come to believe “through their word.” And what does he pray for? One thing, essentially. He prays that they may be one. “That they all may be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us.”
Now if we read this as referring only to the external unity of believers — organizational harmony, agreement of opinion, institutional coherence — we have missed the thing entirely. We have taken the husk and thrown away the grain. The unity Christ speaks of here is of a completely different order. It is the unity of levels within a single being.
Let us think about this carefully. A man as he ordinarily is, is not one. He is many. He has contradictory desires, contradictory thoughts, contradictory wills. In the morning he resolves one thing; by afternoon he has forgotten it. He loves and hates the same person within a single hour. He makes promises he does not keep — not out of dishonesty, exactly, but because the “I” that made the promise is not the same “I” that faces the moment of fulfillment. This is the condition of the natural man, the first man. He is a crowd pretending to be a person.
What Christ prays for is the end of this fragmentation. “That they may be made perfect in one.” The word “perfect” here does not mean morally flawless. It means complete, brought to fullness, made whole. It is the same word used of a fruit that has ripened. A man who is “made perfect in one” is a man in whom the warring selves have been brought under a single ruling principle — and that ruling principle is not the ego, not the natural self-love that usually governs us, but something received from above. “I in them, and you in me.”
Notice the structure: the Father is in Christ, Christ is in them, and through this indwelling they become one. This is a description of levels. The higher enters the lower, and in doing so, transforms it. The lower does not ascend by its own effort to the higher. It receives the higher. It opens to it. And the opening is what makes unity possible.
This connects directly to the Sirach passage. Wisdom meets a man “as a mother” — she comes toward him. She feeds him. He does not manufacture the bread of understanding from his own resources. He receives it. But he must be in a state to receive it, and this is what “fearing the Lord” means in the inner sense: it means valuing this higher possibility above the satisfactions of the mechanical self. It means standing still long enough to be met.
The love Christ speaks of at the close of the prayer — “that the love wherewith you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” — is not sentiment. It is the force of unification itself. It is what draws the scattered fragments of a man into coherence. Without it, we remain a crowd. With it, we begin — slowly, painfully, with many failures — to become one.
And this becoming one is the new birth. It is the New Man. Not another personality layered on top of the old, but the old brought finally into its proper order, illuminated from within, fed with bread it did not bake, sustained by water it did not draw.
Photo by Cristian Palmer on Unsplash
Scripture: Unified English Version — an original rendering synthesized from the King James and New American Bible translations
