Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

We are in the midst of the annual week of prayer for Christian unity. This is the 100th year this has been observed among Catholics, as you can read about at this site.

The reunification of all Christians is something I mention in my prayer daily. It is one of those desires of Jesus that is disarmingly simple and yet causes deep anguish for many. Some seem to only be able to envision a unity that is false, and therefore reject the idea of working towards any unity, believing that if it really is important to God it will "just happen" some day.

No matter what two different kinds of Christians get together, there is the potential for friction. This isn't just about Catholic and Protestant or Orthodox and Catholic; it is Pentecostal and Evangelical, Methodist and Baptist, Calvinist and Lutheran, and a million other smaller splinters who all seem to find reasons to distrust each other.

There was a famous prophetic word spoken in an interdenominational meeting in Kansas City in 1977: "You bishops, mourn and weep because the body of my Son is broken. You priests, mourn and weep because the body of my Son is broken. You lay people, mourn and weep because the body of my Son is broken." All of our distrust and disunity should cause us to look and weep.

I've written in the past about my own ignorant and misguided rejection of other Christians, especially Catholics. I had a really wonderful experience when I visited Rome as part of my post-Confirmation pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I climbed the Holy Stairs, said to be the stairs Jesus took to his condemnation to death. I had first heard of these Holy Stairs as a child in Sunday School. Martin Luther climbed them on his knees when he visited Rome, and I took this as proof that the Roman Catholic Church wanted only to crush the dignity of human beings into the ground, forcing them to grovel. I understood a bit better by the time I climbed them myself, and with each step I prayed for reunification for each splintered Christian group that came to mind. (I had no clue that there are specific prayers traditionally prayed on each step; I'm sure Our Lord didn't mind me improvising.)

So we pray until January 25, the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. Let's pray for conversion of heart for all Christians, that Christ would be all in all to us.

(Read more about Fr. Cantalamessa's experience of the 1977 Kansas City meeting here.)