The Novena for Unity was first prayed from the Transfiguration to the vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. (August 6 - 14, 2023)

Heaven is union with God. The whole point of magnifying the Lord like Mary IS because we desire unity with Him.

We seek unity with God and with each other; the Blessed Virgin Mary is unifying as our mother. We ask her to intercede for us.

"But while in the most Blessed Virgin the Church has already reached that perfection whereby she exists without spot or wrinkle, the faithful still strive to conquer sin and increase in holiness. And so they turn their eyes to Mary" (Lumen Gentium 65)

When God created us in His image, we were originally in union with Him as His creatures. Because of God’s benevolence, we were given free will to choose for ourselves united or fractured lives. Pure love requires freedom, so this is a good thing. However, the ability to say “no” to God enabled the fall of humanity from such a grace-filled union. We see the effects of that disunion, that disorder, across history. We continue to suffer because of temptations from the Evil One seeking chaos and our ruin. We also have concupiscence because of the vast human need, now stemming from our lack of union with God. It is self-love which drives us to attempt to fill those needs with our own ideas and solutions, rather than seeking the Will of God. We look to the material world to do this because in our own short-sightedness we often forget there is a supernatural reality that will endure beyond this Earth and this time. Twisting our human need for unity into something miserable, we are convinced that someone or something other than God (even if “good” by being a part of Creation) will complete this union. But in His great providence, the Lord uses our suffering for good. We are united by this one thing as a human race: the fact that we all experience suffering.

Pope St. John Paul II wrote about the saving power of suffering, including its unitive force, in Salvifici Doloris (1984). 

The world of suffering possesses, as it were, its own solidarity. People who suffer become similar to one another through the analogy of their situation, the trial of their destiny, or through their need for understanding and care, and perhaps above all through the persistent question of the meaning of suffering. Thus, although the world of suffering exists "in dispersion", at the same time it contains within itself a singular challenge to communion and solidarity. (paragraph 8)

[...] The sufferings of Christ created the good of the world's redemption. This good in itself is inexhaustible and infinite. No man can add anything to it. But at the same time, in the mystery of the Church as his Body, Christ has in a sense opened his own redemptive suffering to all human suffering. Insofar as man becomes a sharer in Christ's sufferings—in any part of the world and at any time in history—to that extent he in his own way completes the suffering through which Christ accomplished the Redemption of the world. Does this mean that the Redemption achieved by Christ is not complete? No. It only means that the Redemption, accomplished through satisfactory love, remains always open to all love expressed in human suffering (paragraph 24)

Through Our Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection, all of humanity gained hope of being reunited with Our Creator. He invited us to offer our sufferings with Him and through Him, in unity with the Holy Spirit (recall the priest’s prayer just before the great Amen in Holy Mass).

Grace and faith are free gifts, all we have to do is be receptive to them–most especially in the normative way– through the Church and the sacraments. The grace of Baptism is that first union with God and the soul. Through the Eucharist, we become His tabernacles; He allows Himself to be contained within our humanity for a brief time as a foretaste of eternal union with Him. In confession we are offered the opportunity to become temples of the Holy Spirit once more, in a baptism of blood.

(as described by Jesus to St. Catherine of Siena in The Dialogue; “This the Divine charity provided in the Sacrament of Holy Confession, the soul receiving the Baptism of Blood, with contrition of heart, confessing, when able, to My ministers, who hold the keys of the Blood, sprinkling It, in absolution, upon the face of the soul.”) 

The “church” as a body of fallen humans, is still prone to disunity. We do know, however, that the Church as Christ’s Body (with Him as the head) is perfected. So when we fall from grace through sin, we sever our union with God and each other. It is human sin that causes the divisions in the Church that we see today. It is human sin that causes divisions among nations, in families, in marriages, in communities, and even within our own person. 

Catechism of the Catholic Church 817: In fact, "in this one and only Church of God from its very beginnings there arose certain rifts, which the Apostle strongly censures as damnable. But in subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the Catholic Church - for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame." (Unitatis Redintegratio 3 § 1) The ruptures that wound the unity of Christ's Body - here we must distinguish heresy, apostasy, and schism (see Canon Law, 751) - do not occur without human sin: “Where there are sins, there are also divisions, schisms, heresies, and disputes. Where there is virtue, however, there also are harmony and unity, from which arise the one heart and one soul of all believers.” (Origen)

Thus, as we set about to pray this novena for unity, we will briefly study the virtues needed to live it out. Humility, Obedience, Detachment, Solidarity, Trust, Charity, Justice, Gratitude, and Discretion. These virtues will be explained as part of our prayerful meditation during this novena. The Church needs people striving for holiness so that unity may increase, with Christ dwelling in our homes, hearts, and churches. St. Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue, passages from the Catechism and Scripture guide each day. The meditations are a page or less.

CCC 828: By canonizing some of the faithful, i.e., by solemnly proclaiming that they practiced heroic virtue and lived in fidelity to God's grace, the Church recognizes the power of the Spirit of holiness within her and sustains the hope of believers by proposing the saints to them as models and intercessors. (Lumen Gentium 40; 48-51) "The saints have always been the source and origin of renewal in the most difficult moments in the Church's history." (St. John Paul II, Christifideles Laici 16, 3) Indeed, "holiness is the hidden source and infallible measure of her apostolic activity and missionary zeal." (Christifideles Laici 17, 3)

CCC 845: To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son's Church. The Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and salvation. The Church is "the world reconciled." She is that bark which "in the full sail of the Lord's cross, by the breath of the Holy Spirit, navigates safely in this world." According to another image dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah's ark, which alone saves from the flood. (St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and 1 Peter 3:20-21)