Commentary: The Way of Authentic Ecumenism

The Church is ecumenical in her mission. Not simply to be nice to other Christians but to be faithful to her Lord who wills that "all may be one".

LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - This week, in preparation for the great Feast of Pentecost, the Priestly Prayer of Christ will be read in the Liturgy.

Pope Benedict XVI has, in continuity with his predecessor, the late Servant of God John Paul II, continued to implore the Holy Spirit to lead us to Unity.

Meeting with the Armenian Patriarch this week, he continues to reach toward the full communion of the One Church.

The Prayer of Jesus echoes in the Church at the beginning of this new missionary age. We need to make it our own:

"I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.

And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me." St. John 17:20-23

Walter Cardinal Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, was interviewed years ago concerning the "progress" of ecumenism in the forty years since the Council promulgated it's 1964 decree "Unitatis Redintegratio", the Decree on Ecumenism.

Cardinal Kasper said that "the Church's ecumenical awareness has grown." He noted that "problems and disappointments still exist" and "obviously, we have still not reached the objective: full and visible communion."

"We are in an intermediary state," he said. "Sometimes, old prejudices persist. Also to be deplored are signs of slowness and egoism... The suspicion that ecumenical dialog harms our own Catholic identity is a grave suspicion...The truth is the opposite. Dialogue presupposes partners who have their own identity...Ecumenism is not a form of ecclesiastical diplomacy, but rather a "spiritual process."

The Church is ecumenical in her mission. Not simply to be nice to other Christians but to be faithful to her Lord who wills that "all may be one". This commitment to authentic ecumenism was an anchor of the contributions of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II and is at the forefront of the strong and wise leadership of Pope Benedict XVI.

Pope John Paul II's Encyclical Letter "Ut Unum Sint" (On the Commitment to Ecumenism, literally "May They Be One") was a monumental contribution to this "spiritual process" of authentic ecumenism.

Among his many encyclicals, apostolic letters and exhortations, it is one of the least understood. In it he proposed a path toward the full communion of the Church. He affirmed that there is no retreat from the ecumenical task and that the "way of ecumenism is the way of the Church"

His Apostolic Letter, Orientale Lumen (The Light of the East), promulgated on May 2, 1995, the Feast of St. Athanasius, was oriented toward healing the rift between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.His return of the bones of Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom, pre-division archbishops of Constantinople, was one in a series of profound gestures toward the Orthodox and, in particular Patriarch Bartholomew I.

They were also prophetic in nature.

Pope Benedict has not only mentioned these actions regularly, but has continued the work, acting in a prophetic and pastoral manner on this vital front.

John Paul wrote regularly of the "two lungs" of Christianity breathing together once again in the Third Millennium. Benedict the Builder seems ready to help resuscitate the one New Man.

If, as the Second vatican Council so clearly proclaimed, the "fullness of truth subsists" in the Catholic Church - and I believe that it does - that gives we who are Catholic the highest responsibilty. From "those to whom much is given", said the Lord, "much is required." This truth claim should not make us haughty, but humble, and ready to pray and work.

I am a "revert" to the Catholic Church. I wandered back home, after my wayward teenage years, to again embrace my deeply held Catholic faith. Though this is the faith that I had been raised in, my return came after a "search for truth" during the period sometimes referred to as the age of the "counter culture".

This search for truth led me to make my childhood faith my own; to seriously consider the claims of the Gospel after years of living as a "cultural" Catholic with no real integration of my faith with my daily life.

Among the many questions that troubled me in my journey back to faith was why the Christian Church was broken, splintered and seemingly at odds, camp against camp, for an entire millennium. This question led me to a study of Church History.

My concern for understanding the causes of the great divide between East and West led me through the Patristic literature and rooted within me a deep love for the Eastern Church Fathers.

My concern over the divisions in the West, led me to study the writings of the Protestant Reformers. This study actually led me even more fully into the Catholic Church into which I had been baptized as a child and confirmed in as an early teenager.

I love the Catholic faith. I am deeply appreciative of the fullness that is Catholic Christian faith, worship, teaching and life. However, perhaps as a result of the journey, as well as a sense of a personal spiritual vocation, I have carried a lifelong burden to see the prayer of Jesus, recorded in St. John, Chapter 17, answered.

Into a world that is fractured, divided, wounded, filled with "sides" and "camps" at enmity with one another, the Catholic Church is called to proclaim, by both word and deed, the unifying love of a living God.

The heart of the "Gospel" (literally "Good News"), is the message that in and through Jesus Christ, authentic unity with God - and through Him, in the Spirit, with one another- is not only possible but is the plan of God for the entire human race.

In Jesus Christ, we are invited into communion with God the Father. In Him, we find communion with one another. In Him we are invited into the world that He still loves to carry forward in time His redemptive mission.

In His "High Priestly Prayer", the Son of God still prays to the Father, "...that they may all be one". Yet, in His Church, His Body on earth, that unity is not present, at least not yet. We are broken, at enmity with one another, and we sometimes fail to take the call to unity seriously.

The heart of God breaks.

There is a reciprocal relationship revealed in the sacred words contained in this continuing prayer of Jesus. The world will believe the message we proclaim - and respond to invitation inherent within our mission- when we demonstrate our own unity of love with one another.

The prayer of the Son of God will be answered; the only question is how soon it will happen. In some wonderful way, we who are Christians can help to hasten that day by the way we choose to live with one another. That is the message that the great apostle Paul proclaims to the Ephesian Christians.

"Brothers and sisters: I, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace; one Body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." Ephesians 4: 1-6

Paul was the apostle of unity between the early Jewish and Gentile believers who were deeply divided. He knew the corrosive effect of divisions within the Body of Christ. His words urge us to "live in a manner worthy of the call".

There is still only "...one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and father of all". The God who is One, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, places the impulse toward Christian unity in our hearts. This call to unity in Jesus Christ must become the heart cry of the entire Christian Church so that this prayer be fulfilled; and so that the "world may know".

In his Encyclical letter on Christian unity (signed on the Feast of the Ascension in 1995), Pope John Paul II not only reaffirmed that the "spiritual process" of ecumenism is an integral part of the Churches Mission, he also raised the stakes.

He called for the use of a new language in our relationships with other Christians. He affirmed our foundational unity in one Baptism. The late Pope underscored the language of communion as the way of the vocabulary to be used in authentic ecumenical efforts:

"42. It happens for example that, in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, Christians of one confession no longer consider other Christians as enemies or strangers but see them as brothers and sisters. Again, the very expression 'separated brethren' tends to be replaced today by expressions which more readily evoke the deep communion linked to the baptismal character which the Spirit fosters in spite of historical and canonical divisions. Today we speak of "other Christians", "others who have received Baptism", and "Christians of other Communities"."

The ecumenical mission of the Church was at the heart of John Paul's pontificate, and is at the heart of Pope Benedict's, because it is reveals the longing of the heart of the Lord. To be a faithful Catholic is to long for the full communion of the Church.

The late Pope John Paul called all of the faithful to carry forward the task of ecumenism with a practical and spiritual urgency:

"40. Relations between Christians are not aimed merely at mutual knowledge, common prayer and dialog. They presuppose and from now on call for every possible form of practical cooperation at all levels: pastoral, cultural and social, as well as that of witnessing to the Gospel message.

"Cooperation among all Christians vividly expresses that bond which already unites them, and it sets in clearer relief the features of Christ the Servant". This cooperation based on our common faith is not only filled with fraternal communion, but is a manifestation of Christ himself.

Moreover, ecumenical cooperation is a true school of ecumenism, a dynamic road to unity. Unity of action leads to the full unity of faith: "Through such cooperation, all believers in Christ are able to learn easily how they can understand each other better and esteem each other more, and how the road to the unity of Christians may be made smooth. In the eyes of the world, cooperation among Christians becomes a form of common Christian witness and a means of evangelization which benefits all involved."

In a wonderful interview with then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (published under the title "Salt of the Earth" by Ignatius Press), the Cardinal was asked a question concerning John Paul II's vision of Christian unity for the Third Millennium.

The cardinal, now our Pope, told the interviewer that this was foremost in the heart of the Holy Father. Pope John Paul II believed that whereas the first millennium was a millennium of union and the second a millennium of disunion, the third would be a millennium of re-union:

"The Pope does indeed cherish a great expectation that the millennium of divisions will be followed by a millennium of unifications. He has in some sense the vision that the first Christian millennium was a millennium of Christian unity-there were schisms, as we know, but there was still the unity of East and West; the second millennium was the millennium of great divisions; and that now, precisely at the end, we could discover a new unity through a great common reflection. His whole ecumenical effort stands in this historical-philosophical perspective. He is convinced that the Second Vatican Council, with its yes to ecumenism and its call to ecumenism, is part of this historical philosophical movement."

Now, this profound theologian, this man of deep prayer and communion with the Lord, occupies the Chair of Peter and bears the name Benedict XVI. He has made authentic ecumenism a priority of his service to the Church and the world into which she is sent.

As we approach the great feast of Pentecost, may we join with him, in prayer and in action and walk the way of authentic ecumenism.

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