Love is the only path to Christian unity, pope says
NCR article: 26 Jan 2024
Divided Christians will draw closer to one another only by loving God and loving their neighbors, serving one another and not pointing fingers in blame for past faults, Pope Francis said.
Closing the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity with an evening prayer service Jan. 25 at Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Francis was joined by Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury and, at the end of the service, the two commissioned pairs of Anglican and Catholic bishops from 27 countries to “bear witness together to the hope that does not deceive and to the unity for which our Savior prayed.”
Link to full article:
https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/love-only-path-christian-unity-pope-says
Members of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, who were meeting in Rome, also participated along with representatives of Orthodox, Protestant and Anglican communities in Italy.
In his homily, Francis reflected on the theme for the 2024 celebration of the week of prayer: “You shall love the Lord your God … and your neighbor as yourself” from Luke 10:27.
The passage comes from a Gospel story in which a scholar of the law asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. After Jesus affirms the need to love God and one’s neighbor, the scholar asks, “And who is my neighbor?”
“This question attempts to divide, to separate people into those we should love and those we should shun,” Francis said. “This kind of division is never from God; it is from the devil.”
“Only a love that becomes gratuitous service, only the love that Jesus taught and embodied, will bring separated Christians closer to one another,” he said. “Only that love, which does not appeal to the past in order to remain aloof or to point a finger, only that love which in God’s name puts our brothers and sisters before the ironclad defense of our own religious structures, will unite us.”
Although it was not foreseen, Welby also offered a reflection at the service, explaining that Francis invited him to do so.
Christians, he said, as individuals and as churches can choose to be angry or to love. “Anger imprisons us; our rivalry or dislike of our brothers and sisters cuts us off from the freedom that God offers his church.”
But, the archbishop said, “a church caught up in the fire of the love of God through the Holy Spirit will be a church of reconciliation, a church of hope, a church of healing,” it will be a church that can “care for the millions, the billions who are by the road in pain, lost and suffering.”
Christians, Francis said in his homily, should never have to ask who their neighbor is because “each baptized person is a member of the one body of Christ; what is more, everyone in this world is my brother or my sister, and all together we compose that ‘symphony of humanity’ of which Christ is the firstborn and redeemer.”
Francis urged people to ask themselves: “Do I, and then my community, my church, my spirituality, act like a neighbor? Or are they barricaded in defense of their own interests, jealous of their autonomy, caught up in calculating what is in their own interest, building relationships with others only in order to gain something for themselves?”
If it is the latter, he said, “it would not only be a matter of mistaken strategies, but of infidelity to the Gospel.”
The week of prayer concludes each year on the feast of the conversion of St. Paul. At the beginning of the liturgy, Francis, Welby and Orthodox Metropolitan Polykarpos of Italy, the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s representative in Rome, prayed before what is believed to be St. Paul’s tomb.
According to the Acts of the Apostles, after his conversion St. Paul immediately asks, “What am I to do, Lord?”
Christians, although divided, the pope said, must also ask, “What are we to do, Lord?”
The first response, the pope said, is “pray.”
“Prayer for unity is the primary responsibility in our journey together,” he said. “And it is a sacred responsibility, because it means being in communion with the Lord, who prayed above all to the Father for unity.”
Francis and Welby also prayed for peace, remembering particularly the people of Israel and Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, South Sudan and Congo.
When St. Paul asked God what he was supposed to do, the pope said, the Lord told him, “Get up and go.”
“Get up, Jesus says to each of us and to our efforts on behalf of unity,” the pope said. “So let us get up in the name of Christ from our tired routine and set out anew, for he wills it, and he wills it ‘so that the world may believe.’ “
There are 2 women bishops, from the Amazon (Brazil) and Mexico, among the 27 pairs. “My presence at this summit is prophetic” says one of them. Indeed…
https://catholicreview.org/anglican-catholic-bishops-travel-pray-work-together/
I am so pleased to see mention of ecumenism on this site during this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
For many years I was involved in organising what became the main ecumenical service in Edinburgh during Church Unity Week due to my role in the Archdiocesan Ecumenical Commission which I chaired for over twenty years and, more latterly, as a member of the Council of Edinburgh Churches Together.(ECT)
Sadly, the current manifestation of our Commission doesn’t seem interested in continuing the tradition that we had developed over the years and, also, very sadly, ECT remains dormant at the moment.
So, here in Edinburgh, where the modern ecumenical movement was born, there was little mention of Church Unity this week — or, at least, I didn’t hear much mention of it.
I would like to share below a recent leader article, “Time to move closer”, from the Tablet — I am sure Brendan would not mind us sharing it as we are told it is already shared with the Church Times.
And, below that, I would like to share again my brief report on Ecumenism and the Synodal Church from our most recent Edinburgh Newman meeting led by Mgr. Philip Kerr.
Time to move closer.
Christian unity
Joint enterprises take a bit of work – and an act of will. This leader comment, intended to mark the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, has been back and forth a couple of times between The Tablet and the Church Times. It is being published simultaneously in both papers. One important message behind the Week of Prayer is that such work is necessary if the scandal of disunity in the Body of Christ is to be overcome. Many of the barriers between Anglicans and Roman Catholics have started to fall away, some of them through diligent debate between international theologians, some through personal friendships, many through the coming of a new generation that refuses to adopt the antagonisms of the past.
A major problem now is a reluctance in these two portions of the Body of Christ to grasp the opportunities presented to them by progress so far. It is as if the stirring ecumenical mantra – doing everything together except those things that must still be done separately – has been buried under a mountain of institutional inertia. Why does each body still act as if the other does not exist? Why are statements about political and social matters not made together as a matter of routine? Why are investigations and commissions not jointly resourced? Why is an initiative such as the visit of Pope Francis, Archbishop Welby and the Kirk Moderator to South Sudan so rare?
What is lost in this disunity is an opportunity to learn from each other, and the lesson most needed is how to exercise authority in the light of the Gospel. Joint initiatives have stumbled over the question of how each body decides what to do. Anglicans are organised through a sophisticated network of dispersed authority, meting out to individual dioceses and provinces what to Roman Catholics is a surprising degree of autonomy. In their turn, Anglicans are surprised by the unity that attaches to the personal authority of the Pope. As Roman Catholics begin to explore, belatedly, the concept of synodality, they might be puzzled to see that a system designed to guard against autocracy seems to encourage open dissent in a way that the utterances of a single leader do not. In the light of negative reactions to the Anglican introduction of same-sex blessings, and the Vatican’s publication of Fiducia Supplicans lifting the prohibition of the same, a cynic might observe that many in the Church do not wish to exercise the freedoms that they are offered – or, more precisely, do not wish others to exercise those freedoms.
Yet ordinary men, women and children in the pews read the same Scriptures as each other, say the same prayers. They see the need to welcome strangers, and together they welcome; the need for pastoral care of the wounded and excluded, and they care; the need for social action, and they act. It is here that Christian unity has stopped being a hope for the future and has become the present reality. It is leadership from below, impelled by the Holy Spirit.
Edinburgh Newman. Ecumenism and the Synodal Church.
We had an excellent meeting and a full house so, it seems, there is still life left in the ecumenical dream. I hadn’t realised that there was such an important section of the Synod devoted to Christian Unity. Philip took us through all of Section 7, On the Road Towards Christian Unity. a) to f) are the Convergences. c), for example, states that Ecumenism is first and foremost a matter of spiritual renewal that also requires processes of repentance and healing of memory. g) to j) are Matters for Consideration.
Especially important, I thought, especially having read Tom O’Loughlin’s excellent book, “Eating Together, Becoming One”, is i) which states that we need to examine the issue of Eucharistic hospitality (Communicatio in sacris) from theological, canonical and pastoral perspectives in light of the link between sacramental and ecclesial communion. Finally, k) to o) are the Proposals. m) There is also a desire to continue to involve Christians of other Churches and ecclesial traditions in Catholic synodal processes at all levels and to invite more fraternal delegates to the next session of the Assembly in 2024. n) A proposal has been put forward by some to convene an ecumenical Synod on common mission in the contemporary world. All in all, this seems like a renewal of the “not an optional extra” understanding of our commitment to the goal of Christian Unity which we don’t seem to have heard much of for a very long time. “There is also a desire to continue to involve Christians of other Churches ….” so, other Christians do belong to a body we can recognise as “church”, after all. Remember Ratzinger and the CDF’s Dominus Iesus in August 2000.
A final thought, isn’t amazing that the blessing of the love shared between two human beings can get some people so het up yet the scandal of disunity in the Body of Christ is meekly accepted.