of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Fifth Week of Easter – May Our Souls Be In Harmony

Fifth Week of Easter – May Our Souls Be In Harmony

“May our souls be in harmony.” This phrase of the Unity Prayer is slightly different from most of the other phrases. The others speak of “unity”, “unison”, “being as one” but this one speaks of harmony. This has important implications for us especially as our cenacles and Movement become more diverse.

Harmony is not the same as unison. In unison, everything is the same; in harmony, they are different but complementary. Why must our hearts beat in unison with Jesus but our souls or, perhaps more accurately translated, our innermost being be in harmony?

Recall that Jesus’ petition that our hearts beat in unison is about partaking of His divinity – being transformed into the divine nature. We must not depart one bit from the nature of God – we must always be selfless love. To use a concept from Saint Thomas Aquinas, there is not an absolute good and an absolute evil in the world with a great contest between the two. There is only absolute good (God) and departure from absolute good. Any departure from God is sin be it venial or satanic. Thus, we must always be in unison with God’s nature – our hearts must beat in unison with Jesus’ heart.

However, even though it is Jesus alive in us by the grace that transforms us into the divine nature, we are still ourselves in our innermost being. We are a collection of harmonious, complementary individuals in the body of Christ. AND WE MUST ACCEPT THESE DIFFERENCES as long as they are rooted in our unified hearts. Let’s look at a practical example from the Diary:

Jesus: “May our souls be in harmony. Offer this to Me. Taking your food without any taste is a sacrifice from your heart which is tasty for Me. In this way, our hands gather in unity.”

The Spiritual Diary (First Edition); Elizabeth Kindelmann; p. 207

The unity is our desire to gather souls by sacrificing even the taste of our meals. However, how we do that may vary greatly from one person or even culture to another. Let us rejoice in the unity of heart to desire souls and the harmony of the many different ways each of us go about it and never fall into the trap of judging others about how they go about making sacrifices.

There can be multiple paths to God’s will. A classic example is Moses and the Israelites worshiping the golden calf. God’s will was to establish a nation. He was going to do that through Israel but, when they rebelled, He told Moses that He was going to destroy Israel and make the nation out of Moses instead. Moses pleaded that God not destroy Israel and God listened (Ex 32:11-13); He took a different path to His will. We see this in Abraham negotiating with God over the destruction of Sodom (Gen 19:23-32) and even Mary and Jesus at Cana. There, Mary says, “they have no wine” and Jesus’ reply is a colloquial Aramaic phrase that basically means, “so what?” It didn’t matter to Him one way or the other but He yielded to Mary’s request.

Let’s get even more practical. As the Flame of Love Movement grows to renew the entire Church and world in grace and break Satan’s dominion, we can expect to draw participants from a much wider population than our tradition base. Our traditional base is generally quite conservative in both their social and religious views.

As we grow, we must welcome and make feel welcome brothers and sisters who may have much more liberal views on a wide variety of topics. As long as their hearts are beating in the same unison with Jesus’ selflessly loving divine nature, their hands are gathering in the same dedication to the salvation of souls, and it is not a matter of sin as the Church teaches (rather than our personal opinion of what is sin), this is harmony and our ability to understand each other as different expressions of the same underlying unity is beautiful. Each innermost being is different – different in culture, experiences, pains, joys, available resources, and priorities. They do not need to be the same.

Jesus’ earnest desire is that our hearts beat in unison (with His divinity), our hands gather (souls) in unity, our thoughts be as one (for the salvation of souls) but, when it comes to our innermost being, He does not require or even desire unison; He desires harmony. So should we. Peace.


Quotations from the Diary

p207: Jesus: “May our souls be in harmony. Offer this to Me. Taking your food without any taste is a sacrifice from your heart which is tasty for Me. In this way, our hands gather in unity.”

p98: On Thursday and Friday, at the Lord’s request, I eat only bread and water, and I offer it for the twelve priests and to make reparation to the Lord. Meanwhile, the Lord sat – in a spiritual way – next to me and said:
Jesus: “Oh, how this pleases Me. So few times have I enjoyed participating in such an intimate banquet. The souls that make reparation and faithfully follow My desires are so few.”
”May our souls be in harmony. In this way, our hands will gather in unity.”

p97: Jesus: “You see My riches. I need you and I enrich you. Therefore, may our hands gather in unity since our thoughts are one and our souls are in harmony.
. . . . . I ask you to take advantage of every opportunity to ask our heavenly Father that more would know Me. For many, this is not easy, but they will experience difficulty only until they get very close to Me. Once they are beside Me, all will be easy because love makes sacrifices easy to bear.”

Flame of Love Basics Series: The Unity Prayer