The sinful spirit of the world divides and separates people; the Spirit of Christ unites people and brings them together. It was the sinful spirit of the world that caused the people of Babel to become confused and scattered. The Spirit of Christ, on the other hand, enabled people to understand those who were different from them.

What would happen if we carried the Spirit of Christ into the sinful structures of the world? What if we brought the Spirit of Christ into the dead bones of our broken relationships among races and sexes and cultures and regions of the world? Wouldn’t those dead bones rise to life, as in Ezekiel’s prophecy, if we were able to breathe into them the Spirit of Christ!

Paul wrote to the Romans that “all creation groans and is in agony.” We long for unity, and so we pray that the Spirit may “unite the races and nations on earth and disperse the divisions of word and tongue.” We Christians “have been given to drink of the one Spirit,” whom the sequence names “Father of the poor.”

When we have done away with the human divisions represented by the poor, then, indeed, the Spirit shall have renewed the face of the earth, and we shall be able to say to people, as Jesus did, “Peace be with you.”

All are called to be part of this catholic unity of the People of God, a unity which is harbinger of the universal peace it promotes. And there belongs to it, or are related to it in various ways, the Catholic faithful as well as all who believe in Christ, and indeed the whole of mankind. For all are called to salvation by the grace of God.

Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church,
1964:13