{"id":4042,"date":"2025-06-22T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/?p=4042"},"modified":"2025-06-21T16:20:31","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T16:20:31","slug":"united-in-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/2025\/06\/22\/united-in-christ\/uncategorized\/4042\/","title":{"rendered":"United in Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Yoksel Zok on unsplash.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m reflecting on St Paul\u2019s letter to the Galatians. His words are a call to unity that has a particular resonance in today\u2019s divided and fragmented world. It seems that wherever we look today we see broken broken relationships and broken communities. There are many voices today that encourage and fuel division, encouraging us to distance ourselves from others.

In challenging times these voices can be beguiling. They call us to draw together with others \u201clike us\u201d, creating divisions between \u201cinsiders and outsiders\u201d, between \u201cthem and us\u201d. St Paul reminds the Galatians and us that there is no place for such division in the Christian community:

\u201cYou are, all of you, children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. All baptised in Christ, you have all clothed yourselves in Christ, and there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus.\u201d<\/em>

His words are not a call to uniformity, that would be fairly straightforward. We could create a \u201cChristian model\u201d that everyone has to conform to. We\u2019ve tried that in various forms over the centuries and we know it doesn\u2019t work.

Instead St Paul reminds us that in clothing us in Christ our baptism calls us to seek true unity. It\u2019s a unity that risks allowing diversity to flourish, that acknowledges that diversity can enrich and sustain our unity. The unity baptism calls us to requires us to accept and embrace our differences.

It calls us to maintain our unity in Christ by welcoming those we consider \u201cother\u201d as we would welcome Christ. It requires us to put ourselves aside so we can listen to their stories with open and humble hearts. Baptism calls us to build a unity that delights in our rich diversity as God delights in us.

How are you responding to the unifying call of your baptism today?
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m reflecting on St Paul\u2019s letter to the Galatians. His words are a call to unity that has a particular resonance in today\u2019s divided and fragmented world. It seems that wherever we look today we see broken broken relationships and broken communities. There are many voices today that encourage and fuel division, encouraging us to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[324,222,544,461,759,239,388,271,537,246,1],"tags":[112,28,18,53,124,827,434,6,8,33,229,13,29,15,24,10,163],"class_list":["post-4042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baptism","category-benedictine-spirituality","category-discernment","category-divine-office","category-ecumenism","category-gospel","category-holy-spirit","category-lectio-divina","category-liturgy","category-scripture","category-uncategorized","tag-baptism","tag-benedictine","tag-challenge","tag-christ","tag-community","tag-diversity","tag-galatians","tag-gospel","tag-hope","tag-kingdom","tag-kingdomvalues","tag-lectiodivina","tag-love","tag-newlife","tag-stpaul","tag-trust","tag-unity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4042"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4047,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4042\/revisions\/4047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turveyabbey.org.uk\/pilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}