Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
Thursday, 20 January 2011 06:38 pmIt's the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. For some reason I cannot even name, the unity of the Church is a cause close to my heart. Adapting the prayer of Jesus in John 18:20-23, I offer a prayer:
Parent God: We pray, as did your child, Jesus Christ, on the night before the Crucifixion, that we may be one, as Jesus and you are one. As you are in Christ and Christ in you, may we also be in you, so that the world may experience your love. The glory that you have given Christ is given to us, so that we may be one, as you are one, Christ in us and you in Christ, that we may become completely one, so that the world may know that Christ loves us even as you loved Christ. Amen.Yesterday, Benedict XVI (not my favorite person in the world) said:
[Unity] comes from [God], from the Trinitarian Mystery, from the unity of the [Parent] with [Christ] in the dialogue of love which is the Holy Spirit and our ecumenical effort should be open to divine action, it must be a daily invocation of God's help. The Church is [God's] and not ours.Amen! Father Nathan preaches:
If a person is predisposed to see their own particular fellowship as the one true Church, of course, and to see all of the others as counterfeits or frauds of one kind or another, as less than themselves, as lacking in certain crucial qualities, than what is the point of meeting together? What progress can be made at all until that mental wall is smashed and torn down?I think one of Anglicanism's many advantages is that it is very difficult to think of the Episcopal Church, Anglican Communion, or Church of England as representing the one true Church, or even the only authentic voice to the mission of that Church. We're very aware we're only a single branch of the greater Church, which is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.
Rather than retreating into that softminded security of what is known and comfortable, you and I are called by the Holy Spirit to remain open, to see from God’s point of view, to be ready for the new thing that God will do in our midst.