I recently watched a brief documentary about a musical artist. In the video, a composer talked about how he saw music as a chance for the musicians and the audience to feel together — in other words, the music creates a common experience of emotion that the artists and the listeners share.

Not long afterward, I was looking up some information about the meaning of U2’s song Where the Streets Have No Name since I’m trying to learn to play it on the guitar. (Trying is the keyword.) I learned that Bono was inspired to write the song after learning of a town in Northern Ireland where residents were assigned a street based on their occupation and religion, a policy that emphasized differences and enforced segregation.

A place where the streets have no name would be a place where forced separation was abolished and people were united. As he discussed his inspiration for the song, he reflected that he saw a concert as a place where the barriers that separate people are set aside and everyone can be united in a shared experience. A concert is not necessarily the place where the streets have no name, but it can be seen as one of those places.

I think that all art is based on this idea of a unifying encounter of some kind. The artist creates a work that is meant to have a particular effect, to create an encounter. The audience attuned to that art experiences the encounter the artist intended.

In my own experience, I think about experiencing the poem Sea-Fever, and I could practically smell the ocean air. After completing Moby Dick, I felt salty and seasick. After reading Othello I simply and absolutely hated the deception and treachery of Iago. When I hear the first of Bach’s Cello Suites, I have no words for the experience except to say that it is the music itself. When I look at Van Gogh’s First Steps, I feel the purpose and beauty and responsibility of being a parent. Art is a unifying force, and one that must, therefore, be prudently created.

Various philosophies, religions and ideologies also create unity among their adherents. A set of common beliefs and perspectives gives us a common ground for viewing the world together, and people are naturally drawn together when they share a worldview.

Political movements also unite people through a common cause and vision of how the world or country ought to be.

There are many other things that unite us together. C.S. Lewis says that friendship is like two people standing shoulder to shoulder looking at something, sharing a common interest. When two people find that they are fans of the same sports team or that they both have a common hobby, they are brought together.

The image of romantic love, according to Lewis, is two people face to face, looking at and interested in each other. This is a unique form of unity where two become one in a very real and concrete way that has no match. It is a unity so beautiful that it is the garden of new human life and the foundation of society.

There is another unique kind of unity that happens on planet Earth, and that is the unity of the Mass. Together we gather to worship at the Sacrifice, similar to the way other religious groups gather for their own forms of worship, but then the one God comes to us under the appearance of bread and wine, and we are allowed to eat and drink his Body and Blood. God unites himself with us. The initiative lies on his side, and we need only receive worthily. This kind of unity with the Divine is unparalleled in the world.

As for the worshippers, we are united with each other through this meal in a unique way as well, more deeply and really than if we were simply to sit down to have dinner together. St. Paul teaches us: “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf” (1 Corinthians 10:17). In being united to the one God, we are united with each other through the very ground of being.

In the Kingdom of God, it is the work of God to unite us and bring us together through this sacramental Sacrifice. All divisions fall away, and we are all made one in Christ (Galatians 3:28). A concert, a work of art, a common hobby or a philosophy can bring people together, but only in a manner that unites some common characteristics. The Mass unites us at the core of our existence by uniting us with the Core, and the City of God is truly the place where the streets have no name — because there is only one name, the name of Jesus.