Matthew is a Gospel written for Jewish Christians, which is why it constantly references the Old Testament, and we see that clearly today as he connects the beginning of Jesus’ ministry with Isaiah, which he quotes directly and which we heard in the first reading.

In the Old Testament, God told the Israelites, whom he had freed from Egypt, that they would become a light to the nations by uniting them under the worship of one God. Abraham, to whom God promised a great descendants, had his son Isaac, and Isaac had a son, Jacob. Jacob had twelve sons, and this marked the beginning of the Jewish people as they organized into a nation, with each of Jacob’s sons in charge of a region as the nation divided into twelve distinct tribes. Although they were twelve different tribes, they were meant to work together.

But this unity did not last very long. Two of the most northern tribes around the region of Galilee, the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, came under political and economic stress under King Solomon. Instead of working to remain united with the Jewish Kingdom, they decided to break away and join the kingdom of their Gentile neighbors to the north, who were under the reign of Jeroboam. This led them to begin to adopt non-Jewish traditions and to drift away from their faith in the one God. This weakened them, and eventually those two northern tribes were fully conquered by the Assyrians, becoming part of the “lost tribes” of Israel.

In this context, Isaiah dreams of a day when God will gather what has been broken by healing their divisions, transforming them from a “people who walked in darkness” into a people who “have seen a great light,” so that as a united kingdom they will continue their mission of uniting all nations under one God.

Matthew notices that Jesus begins his public ministry in the north, in the very region of Zebulun and Naphtali, in the place that symbolized division. This means that Jesus came to fulfill Isaiah’s vision. The mission of Jesus can be summed up in one simple statement, Jesus came to heal human division and to bring us into communion. Unity is at the center of the Gospel.

Last week I mentioned that Jesus, as the Lamb of God, came to heal the sin of the world, not just to forgive individual sins, but to heal the condition of sin that separates us from God and from one another. He did so by revealing what this sin is and by giving us the Holy Spirit as our guide, so that we can cooperate with God’s grace to heal our wounded human will and work toward becoming a people of communion. As members of Christ’s Body, the Church, this is the mission we have been entrusted with, to work toward unity.

First, we live unity at the altar and in our prayer. We are united not by our opinions, not by our politics, not by our preferences, but by worship. Every Sunday we are gathered from different families, cultures, generations, and stories, and we come to one table. The Eucharist is what makes us set aside our differences as we become the Body of Christ.

That is why the Church places such importance on what happens before Communion. We stop. We confess our sins. We exchange a sign of peace. We cannot receive the sacrament of unity while clinging to division in our heart, it must be transformed by the sacraments and by prayer.

Remember that prayer is about reorientation. It turns us back toward God and away from ourselves. The first two rules of St. Ignatius illustrate this. The first rule says that when a person is moving away from God and deeper into sin, the enemy makes things feel comfortable, pleasurable, and easy. You feel no resistance. You feel at peace, but it is a false peace. It is like the two northern tribes slowly separating themselves from the Kingdom. When this happens, God begins to bite the conscience, pulling them back to himself.

The second rule says that when a person is moving toward God, toward conversion, toward truth, and toward unity, the enemy stirs anxiety, discouragement, confusion, and conflict. It is the enemy who begins to bite, trying to pull us further away from God. That is when prayer feels like a waste of time and reconciliation becomes difficult. Ignatius says we must be attentive to the spiritual life. If I am being pulled toward God, then I must nourish this moment of grace. If I am being pulled away from God, then I must ask to be led back.

Second, we protect unity inside the Church. If the Church is meant to be a sign of unity to all the nations, then there is nothing more scandalous than a Church that is divided.

Division has threatened the Church from the very beginning. Saint Paul saw that in Corinth Christians were dividing themselves according to who baptized them. “I belong to Paul.” “I belong to Apollos.” “I belong to Cephas.” Paul cuts through all of it with one question, “In whose name were you baptized?” In the name of Jesus. That is who you belong to.

Divisions in the Church are often fed by divisions in leadership. When we forget that Jesus is the one who leads us, we can easily begin following movements, ideologies, preferences, theologians, or particular priests or popes, turning the Church into a competitive battlefield.

We see this today. People divide themselves into camps, traditional versus liberal, one pope against another, one ministry against another. Even the Eucharist becomes a place of conflict, arguments over whether Communion should be received in the hand or on the tongue, kneeling or standing. There is room in the Church for dialogue and even disagreement, but when those differences become division, something has gone wrong in the heart. When Jesus noticed Peter doing this, he said, “Get behind me, Satan.” Satan divides. Jesus is saying, get behind me, let me lead, so that you are not divided.

Third, we live unity through forgiveness. This is where unity becomes deeply personal. If I truly believe that my purpose in life is to build communion, then that conviction shapes how I live in my family, in my friendships, and in my parish. When division appears, I will not let pride have the last word. If I am at fault, I will have the humility to say so. If someone has hurt me, I will have the courage to forgive.

Jesus reveals that forgiveness is not a feeling, it is a path. Forgiveness always begins with truth, even when it is difficult. If I am convinced that the truth will set me free, then I will not be afraid to name what went wrong, even when it was me. Forgiveness leads to responsibility. I will seek to become more wholesome and more holy. That means I will seek change. Forgiveness leads to healthy boundaries. Relationships are restored through the rebuilding of trust, and that takes time. Change is not immediate. You cannot simply say, “I am sorry, I won’t do it again,” because you most likely will, but if we are serious about reconciliation, we will take practical steps to be better. Boundaries are set as we learn to trust again.

Forgiveness is not about forgetting, it is about refusing to let resentment rule my heart. Resentment is a warning light in the soul. Sometimes it tells me I need to grow and take responsibility. Sometimes it tells me something unjust is happening and I need to speak. But if I feed resentment, it hardens into bitterness, then into revenge, and slowly it turns my heart into a prison. Christ did not come to set us free so that we could chain ourselves again.

Fourth, unity becomes our calling, our mission, our vocation. Unity is not only something we believe, it is something we live according to our calling.

In marriage, unity is lived through forgiveness. There is no lifelong fidelity without daily mercy. There is no “in good times and in bad” without the constant choice to reconcile.

In the Gospel today, after Jesus begins his mission of unity, he calls the first disciples. He calls them by name. He invites them to cast their nets. Those nets are a symbol of God’s grace meant to gather what is scattered.

That is what the priesthood exists to do. Through the Eucharist, through confession, through anointing, through preaching, through reconciliation, priests are meant to be instruments of God’s unifying grace. We exist so that the Body of Christ does not fall apart.

That is why the Church asks us to pray for vocations. Without priests, we have no sacraments. Without the Eucharist, there is no unity.

Family, today we are reminded of our mission. Every time we pray, every time we forgive, every time we choose peace over resentment, we become an answer to Jesus’ final prayer before the cross, “May they all be one, Father, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe that you sent me.”