From 18 to 25 January all Christians, coming from various Churches and Ecclesial Communities, unite together to celebrate the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The theme for this year’s Week is taken from the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians: “We Will All Be Changed By the Victory of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Christian Unity is achieved if we, as Christians, let Christ’s victory over sin and death, take root in and lead our lives. Thus, the essence of Christ’s victory is his humble servitude. In addition, a beneficial participation in his victory implies a contrite heart. Pope Benedict XVI harped on these two points in his weekly catechesis on Christian Unity of 18 January.
“Compared with ‘victory’ understood in triumphalistic terms, Christ suggests to us a very different path that does not pass by way of force and power. In fact, He affirms: ‘If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all’ (Mark 9:35). Christ speaks of a victory through suffering love, through mutual service, help, new hope and concrete comfort given to the least, to the forgotten, to those who are rejected. For all Christians, the highest expression of this humble service is Jesus Christ Himself -- the total gift He makes of Himself, the victory of His love over death on the Cross, which shines resplendent in the light of Easter morning. We can take part in this transforming ‘victory’ if we allow ourselves to be transformed by God -- but only if we work for the conversion of our lives, and if this transformation leads to conversion.”
Unity is absolutely dependent on an open heart to God personally and communally. The interior conversion which we Christians are called to endorse implies that “we must strengthen our faith in God, in the God of Jesus Christ, who has spoken to us and who made Himself one of us; we must enter into new life in Christ, which is our true and definitive victory; we must open ourselves to one another, cultivating all the elements of that unity that God has preserved for us and gives to us ever anew; we must feel the urgency of bearing witness before the men of our times to the living God, who made Himself known in Christ.”
Christian unity is indispensable if the new evangelisation is to bear good fruit in abundance. We cannot pretend the world to accept a loving Christ if his followers remain undivided. We cannot afford destroying God’s saving grace by our confusing, distrusting and dividing witness! In his encyclical ‘On the Commitment to Ecumenism”, ‘Ut unum sint,’ Blessed John Paul II affirmed: “This unity, which the Lord has bestowed on his Church and in which he wishes to embrace all people, is not something added on, but stands at the very heart of Christ’s mission. Nor is it some secondary attribute of the community of his disciples. Rather, it belongs to the very essence of this community” (§ 9).
The path to visible unity among Christians is difficult and arduous. Therefore, patience is desperately needed. To an ecumenical group from Finland the Pope said: “Our longing for the full, visible unity of Christians requires patient and trustful waiting, not in a spirit of helplessness or passivity, but with deep trust that the unity of all Christians in one Church is truly God’s gift and not our own achievement. Such patient waiting, in prayerful hope, transforms us and prepares us for visible unity not as we plan it, but as God grants it.”
Lord Jesus make us one! Amen.
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
San Gwann