Working Together

One of my favorite novels is “The Last Battle” by C. S. Lewis. This novel, the seventh and final novel in “The Chronicles of Narnia,” is full of Christian imagery.

One particularly poignant scene in the story takes place during the last battle itself.  King Tirian and his few followers are battling the Calormene army that has invaded their land. They are aided in their efforts by a group of dwarfs.

As the tide of the battle turns, dismay suddenly grips Tirian and his followers.  The dwarfs cease their assistance and instead begin attacking them. Facing the disappointment and anger of the loyal soldiers of the king, the dwarfs are unfazed.  They simply shout that they do not care about one side or the other.  They start repeating the refrain, “The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs!”

“The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs!”

“The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs!” This rallying cry represents the concern of the dwarfs only for themselves. There is no question of teamwork, or seeking a common goal.   What the dwarfs want, and their way of doing things, are only things that matter for them. As the world collapses around them, the dwarfs only concern is to keep doing what they have always been doing.

Perhaps a comparable situation is occurring  in the Church now.

Divisions and Revisions

Many different groups and organizations fill the Church.   A short list includes the Legion of Mary, the Neocatechumenal Way, Opus Dei, Catholic Action, the Catholic Scouts, the charismatic renewal, the Knights of Columbus, the Knights of Peter Claver, the Latin Mass society, and the third orders of religious orders like the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Carmelites. Yet there are so many more.  And all of these are legitimate groups, recognized by the Church, offering paths to holiness and means to sanctification.

Each group, of course, has its own particular charism, its own specific emphases, and its own ways of doing things. Nevertheless, there is sometimes a lack of understanding and patience among these different groups. The groups struggle against each other, criticize, complain, and sometimes even act to impede each other.

Even without words, we can hear that refrain: “The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs!” In the midst of these divisions, perhaps we need a revision.  That is to say, maybe we need to look again and see, where unity comes from.

Source of Division

As always, whenever we need to find an answer or a model for our lives, we look to Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ hand-picked group of disciples was a varied bunch.  Consider that He picked  Matthew the tax collector, Simon the Zealot, Peter the fisherman, and Judas.

In his general audience of October 11, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI mentioned the great difference between Simon, called the Zealot, and Matthew.

“Thus, it is highly likely that even if this Simon was not exactly a member of the nationalist movement of Zealots, he was at least marked by passionate attachment to his Jewish identity, hence, for God, his People and divine Law. If this was the case, Simon was worlds apart from Matthew, who, on the contrary, had an activity behind him as a tax collector that was frowned upon as entirely impure. This shows that Jesus called his disciples and collaborators, without exception, from the most varied social and religious backgrounds.”

With such differences and divisions, it is easy to see a microcosm of our church today. But how did the apostles manage to make things work? How did they get past their differences and divisions? Just think of their bickering, their in-fighting and complaining!

Source of Unity

In that same audience, Benedict XVI indicates the source of the unity that kept the apostles together despite their differences.

“And the best thing is that in the group of his followers, despite their differences, they all lived side by side, overcoming imaginable difficulties: indeed, what bound them together was Jesus himself, in whom they all found themselves united with one another. This is clearly a lesson for us who are often inclined to accentuate differences and even contrasts, forgetting that in Jesus Christ we are given the strength to get the better of our continual conflicts. Let us also bear in mind that the group of the Twelve is the prefiguration of the Church, where there must be room for all charisms, peoples and races, all human qualities that find their composition and unity in communion with Jesus.”

It is Christ Himself who gives us the strength to overcome those differences. On the one hand, this is because everything that the disciples and apostles did was for Jesus. He was the end of their actions, and the goal to which they pointed. On the other hand, Jesus was also the one who gave the disciples the grace to overcome natural dislikes and intense emotions.

United in Christ

It is important to see that being united in Christ does not eliminate or destroy the individual personalities or characteristics of the disciples. Christ does not bulldoze their personalities. Rather, He brings them to the fullness of what God intended them to be.

So, too, with us, our unity in Christ should not reduce everyone to being part of the charismatic movement, or a member of the Knights of the Columbus, or the Latin Mass society. Rather, our unity should help us to bring everything to Christ, according to the different paths that He Himself has inspired and given to us.

A Lesson for Us

In an audience some years later, Benedict XVI mentioned the characteristics of this unity in Christ:

This unity is not a worldly product. It comes exclusively from the divine unity and reaches us from the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. Jesus invokes a gift that comes from Heaven and has its effect — real and perceptible — on earth. 

“. . . The unity of future disciples, in being united with Jesus— whom the Father sent into the world — is also the original source of the efficacy of the Christian mission in the world.”

Our witness is effective when it is united. That does not mean that each of us needs to feel at home in the Latin Mass, or prefer to worship among charismatics with praise and worship. Rather, while such things are directed to God, even if they are not our preference or ‘our cup of tea,’ they are part of the legitimate patrimony of the Church.

One Purpose

Years ago, I was privy to a conversation between two graduate students. The law student was convinced that the Latin mass was much better than a charismatic one, and his listener, a medical student, listened patiently.

After the discourse was complete, the future physician replied with an analogy. “You know, there are so many different sorts of cells in the body. There are liver cells, brain cells, muscle cells. Each has its own function, its own structure, its own role in the body. I imagine that if a brain cell saw a liver cell, it would be like, ‘Well, that’s odd. I’m not like that.’ But, that’s just part of the way that the body works.”

A Final Thought

Each community, each charism, has its role in the Church. Although we might not prefer that style or those things, it does not take away from their legitimacy or goodness.  We should not be chanting “The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs!”  In a world already divided, our unity in diversity is an effective witness.

It is also an anticipation of the life in heaven with all the choirs of angels and saints singing in unison. As C. S. Lewis ends The Last Battle, he explains the joys of heaven in this way:

“The things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

This is the unity in heaven that awaits us, a unity that we can experience even now on earth if we allow Christ to be the source of our unity.