A Communion Not of Earth

“How good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.”

Psalm 133 is often read with the warm glow of natural friendship, shared work, shared meals, shared life. We imagine a band of brothers, or a monastery living in peace. Yet the deeper one goes into the heart, the more the psalm reveals something far more mysterious and far more demanding. It speaks of a communion that is not born of temperament or affinity, not shaped by shared projects or compatible personalities. It is the unity of those who breathe the same air of the Kingdom, who hunger for holiness, who long for God more than life, who desire to become “all flame” as Abba Joseph said.

This unity is not sociological. It is ontological. It rises from the deep places where the Spirit prays within us with groans beyond words. It is the unity of heaven and earth bending toward one another in the love of Christ. It includes the saints visible and invisible, the living and the departed, all who stretch their hearts toward the Beloved. It is the unity of those who desire nothing but to abide in His love, who recognize each other not by familiar features but by the scent of the same fire.

The psalm describes this unity as oil running down Aaron’s beard, flowing over his garments. The fathers remind us that oil in Scripture is always symbol of the divine mercy and the Spirit’s anointing. Unity among those who love God is not the result of common effort. It is grace poured out upon those who have emptied themselves. The oil flows because the vessel is open. It descends because the heart bows low.

St. Silouan says, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is humility, and love for enemies, and unbroken peace.” When two souls share this humility before the face of God, they are closer than blood. They inhabit the same interior landscape. They stand beneath the same light. They breathe the same divine breath.

The Desert Fathers understood that friendship in Christ was rare and fierce. It was forged not in shared tasks but in shared repentance. Abba Alonius said, “If a man does not say in his heart, ‘only God and I exist in this world,’ he will not find peace.” And yet paradoxically, those who stood most alone before God became most deeply knit to others who lived the same obedience of heart. Their communion was not the avoidance of solitude but the meeting within solitude.

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra once said that true spiritual kinship begins when two people see the same light, hear the same call, respond with the same surrender: “The spiritual life is the place where souls recognize each other by their longing for God.” The bond is not emotional but eschatological. It is a foretaste of the unity Christ prayed for in John 17, the unity that shines from the transfigured Body of the Lord.

This is why the psalm speaks of “life forevermore.”

The true unity of souls is not of this world. It participates in the endless life of God. It reaches across time and death. It unites monks in the desert, elders in hidden cells, friends separated by oceans, hearts still fighting to believe, and the saints who behold the Face. It is the communion of those who have given their hearts to the same fire, who thirst for the same living water, who bow before the same Crucified Love.

Such unity is not sentiment. It is cruciform.

It demands dying to preference, to possessiveness, to the hunger to be seen. It requires learning to love purely, freely, without grasping. The fathers say that if you want this unity you must first purify your heart of every judgment, every resentment, every whisper of “mine.” Abba Isaac says, “Extend your love to all, but cling to none except God.” And in that clinging, when the heart clings to Him alone, we find ourselves suddenly surrounded by those who cling to Him with us.

This is the communion we are made for.

This is the community of Psalm 133.

Not a fraternity of affinity, but a fellowship of fire.

Not those we choose, but those God gathers.

Not friendships built upon earth, but souls knit in heaven.

May we seek this unity above all:

the unity of those who desire the Kingdom together,

who breathe the same air of holiness,

who bear the same longing for the Beloved,

and who will meet again—whether in this age or the next—

under the anointing that flows down from the Head,

Christ our God,

in whom all true communion lives.