God’s word is alive, powerful and effective › Heb 4, 12-13.

The power to breathe life penetrates the separation between what is imperfect and what is perfect. His word has the power to reveal everything that is hidden in our hearts. This can scare if we forget God’s plans. However, he left us his word to purify us so we could accept his life freely. It is God’s intention that we love and trust him so much that we allow him to infuse his divine life into us and remove the paths of sin and darkness from our lives. Today begins the week of prayer for Christian unity. It is a time when we associate with Christians of many denominations in prayers for union in Christ so that the world believes (John 17, 22–23). God wants to purify us as one body, not as individuals. Part of this cleansing is the effort to tear down the walls that divide his people. Suppose we allow Jesus to cleanse our hearts. In that case, we will participate with him in uniting his body.

The writers of the Second Vatican Council in the Decree on Ecumenism urgently asked all believers for this purification to unite the Church:“ Although the Catholic Church received all the truth revealed by God and all the means of grace, after all, its members do not live accordingly with due zeal, so the face of the Church appears less radiant to our separated brothers and to the whole world, and thus the growth of God’s kingdom is hindered. Therefore, all Catholics should strive for Christian perfection, and each of them should try according to their possibilities so that the Church, which endures Christ’s humiliation and dying on its body, day after day she cleansed herself and renewed herself until Christ prepares her famous, without stain and wrinkle.” (Ecumenism decree, art. 4) In prayer, let God’s word purify us by the power of the Holy Spirit.