“Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me; I have guarded them, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” John 17:11–12.
In today’s Gospel, we return to the Last Supper discourse of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. In this passage, He is interceding for His Apostles and asking that the Father preserve their unity to be a reflection of the unity of the Blessed Trinity. To that end, for today’s reflection, I want to pick up on the theme that I touched on last week here:
Unity in the Church is found through communion with the body and to the head. I want to explore this in a practical sense and tie it to the mystery of the Church and her union with the Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. St. Paul lays out the basic ecclesiology for this most important teaching. The Church is both the bride and the body of Jesus Christ. This is informed by St. Paul’s conversion experience on the Road to Damascus.1 In particular, Our Lord appears to St. Paul and asks him why he persecutes the Lord. He asks this in a personal manner: “Why do you persecute me?” and “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”2 This encounter with the Risen Lord informs St. Paul’s entire ecclesiology and prompts him to write in his letters to the Corinthians and the Ephesians:
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” 1 Corinthians 12:12.
“For as the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, His body, and is Himself its savior… This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” Ephesians 5:24, 32-33.
To explain the union of the body, that is the Church, I want to use the analogy of St. Paul. We, the baptized, are the members that are spoken of in the passage. One can read body parts in this analogy. Hands and feet, perhaps. To be a member of the church, one must fulfill four criteria:
One must be baptized.
One must make a public profession of faith.
One must be in union with the Pope and those in union with him. (The Bishops)
One must not be excommunicated.
These members, in order to function and be ordered to their proper end, must be united to the body, the Church. Here, just as the lay faithful and the clergy are the members and the body, the Pope and the Bishops form the structural integrity of the body. Each of us must be united to the body so that we can be given life through the grace that is dispensed through the sacraments, for example. The practical way we can think about this is:
Each member of the laity is united through their baptism and their obedience to their pastor.
Through unity with their pastor on the parish level, they are then united to their bishop on the diocesan level as well as the rest of the catholic community in that diocese.
Through their communion with their bishop, who has been appointed to that ministry by the pope, they are united to that same pope in Rome.
The Pope, then, is the principle of unity for the entire Church. We must be in communion with him in order to be members of the Catholic Church, properly speaking.
Thus, the members are united to the body through union with the Supreme Pontiff, Leo XIV. But it does not stop there. Through unity with the body, we have union with its Head, as St. Paul tells us, who is Jesus Christ Himself. He is the Head of His body, the Church. Just as the hand must be united to the body in order to be united to the head, so too must the Catholic be united to the Pope through his bishop in order to be united to Christ.
When Our Lord prays that we be ONE, He is praying for His body, the Church, to be united to those whom He is praying for and with at the Last Supper. He intercedes not just for His apostles, united under Blessed Peter, but for all the Church who are united to Him through the Apostles and their successors. To reject these men and their successors, that is, the visible structure of the Body, we are rejecting the Head as well. If we break unity with the Pope and the Bishops, we break unity with the Head, Jesus Christ.
For more from Dr. McGovern, visit his Substack at A Thomist, Dedicated to the Theological tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. Exploring Thomas’ Spiritual Theology and topics in Christology and Mariology.
Cf. Acts of the Apostles 9:1-19.
Acts of the Apostles 9:4,6.
Thank you again for explaining how this prayer is applied to the Church in a very concrete way, and what my response must be to remain a faithful member of CHRIST’s Body.
Fathom Event movie running TONIGHT ONLY Wednesday May 20, 2026 in selected theaters “That They May Be One” is all about this topic.