According to tradition, Micipsa, who was the king of Numidia—a region that today comprises northwest Africa, or more precisely, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia—was an ally of Rome in the third Punic War against Carthage; when he was on his deathbed, he gathered his sons to give them advice.
One of the things he entrusted to them was concord among themselves so that the kingdom would not be divided, but rather could progress. Among the things he told them is a phrase preserved by tradition that is quite well-known: “with concord small things grow; whereas with discord the greatest things fall apart.”
Concord is fundamental for a society to subsist because internal division is in itself an intrinsic principle of destruction that sooner or later leads the society in which discord is found to ruin.
Precisely for this reason, we must always be attentive to whether our ideas, feelings, actions, manners, gossip, half-truths, interpretations of the intentions of others, etc., are generating division. Many times, a movement is generated within us that we not only do not know how to control but also even fail to perceive.
Faced with this, the attitude that every Christian must promote is the opposite: always to be sincere, respectful, open to others, to give the benefit of the doubt regarding intentions, to forgive from the heart, not to be oversensitive to the behavior of our neighbor, etc. All these attitudes toward others, whether they be inferiors, equals, or superiors, will always promote peace and a more humane society and, of course, a more Christian one, because true concord is born from charity, which is the supreme value of the Gospel.
Therefore, as Christians, in whatever society we find ourselves, we must seek to be promoters of concord and be attentive and careful not to be the cause of discord and divisions.
