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Why Do We Pray for Christian Unity?
During the time of the Roman persecution in the third century, a Roman governor in his report to the emperor observed: “Christianity cannot be a true religion, because those Christians talk about love all the time, and see how they treat one another.” We also know the well-known words of Mahatma Ghandi: “I like Jesus but I don’t care for Christians.” These are sober reminders for us to reexamine who we are as followers of Christ, who are called to show the world who we are by loving one another.
Cardinal Kasper shares his insight: “Love entails a unity that does not absorb the other person but rather accepts and affirms the other precisely in his otherness and only thus establishes him in his true freedom” (his Church and Faith).
Early this century two leaders in Christian unity, Dom Lambert Beauduin and Cardinal Mercier, expressed their conviction as follows:
To unite, we must love each other;
To love each other, we must know each other;
To know each other we must meet each other.
This kind of encounter of love and mutual knowledge contributes to the authentic unity. Such an interchange opens new horizons for all, so that the end product is achieved, “not so much by way of compromise and concession, but by way of mutual and creative discovery.”
“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… To believe in Christ means to desire unity; to desire unity means to desire the Church; to desire the Church means to desire the communion of grace which corresponds to the Father’s plan from all eternity. Such is the meaning of Christ’s prayer: Ut unum sint (that they be one).” These are the magnificent words of St. John Paul II.
Our dialogue is not just a horizontal dialogue with other Christians, but a vertical dialogue with God. It is not the return of all of you to us, but the return of all of us to Him: “turning towards each other and all together towards their one Lord.”
We need to turn towards each so as to pray together to our one Lord. Fr. Paul Couturier (1881-1953) who gave ecumenism its “heart of love and prayer” said: “The essence of the question is to promote ecumenical prayer in all Christian groups, a prayer which will echo our intimate suffering in the horrible sin of division. We have all sinned. We must all humiliate ourselves, and pray without ceasing and constantly call for the miracle of reunion… Catholic prayer, Orthodox prayer, Anglican prayer or Protestant prayer is not enough. We need them all and all together.”
The work of Christian unity is the work of the Holy Spirit. We are invited to listen to the Spirit, the giver of unity. When we are disheartened for the delay of progress in Church unity, we need to ask ourselves if we are self-serving or isolating ourselves from other traditions or preoccupied with ‘preserving the church as we like it.’ We need to pray that God’s gift of reconciling love will come among us and the churches. To pray for unity is fervently to ask God to take away from us all pride and prejudice, all arrogance and distrust which hinders Christ’s will for the unity of his people, and to fill us with love and compassion even for those who are very different from us.
So it’s pretty clear why we need to pray for Christian unity. If you can think more reasons, please share them: ut unum sint!
Fr. Paul D. Lee