Homily For A Service For Christian Unity
Bridgettine Convent, Iver Heath
Right Reverend David Oakley
Bishop of Northampton
20 January 2025
Many commentators have compared the revelation of our Fall from grace in the Book of Genesis with the various mythological accounts of ancient civilisations. They may do this to suggest we modern people should not be to concerned with this somewhat quaint presentation of things. But at the heart of the revelation of the Fall, are some truths, just as important for us to consider, as they were for our ancient ancestors.
First of all, there has been a breakdown in the communion of love between humanity and our Creator, and between individuals and communities within the human race. And secondly, as St Thomas Aquinas teaches us, God shows his omnipotence in his mercy. And only God’s mercy can heal the wounds and divisions we experience in our daily lives.
And so we become a people of God’s promises. We look forward to what the Lord will accomplish for us, rather than rely upon our own broken power to mend what we ourselves have brought about.
Martha, bereaved by her brother’s death, speaks for us this evening, when she says, ‘But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ In these days of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, we make those words our own prayer. And how fitting we should do this, this year, a Jubilee Year as we seek to become pilgrims into hope. Keep in mind, the one who wrote ‘Firmly I believe and truly…’ also wrote, ‘Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on’. A few years ago now, the bishops of England and Wales began to prepare a petition to the Holy Father, that St John Henry Newman be declared a Doctor of the Church. It was a humbling and powerful moment, when the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, readily agreed to support this request with their own letter, acknowledging the witness and teaching of Cardinal Newman.
As our Service today has proclaimed, there is an important bond which unites many Christians in the West and the East. This is the Nicene Creed, painfully won in an ecumenical Council of the Church and after much soul-searching on the part of different Christian parties. We should never lose hope, the faith which brought this statement of faith to birth, will continue to inspire us to overcome the challenges to find ways to work together for the growth of the Kingdom of God within our world.
Mercy, hope, power, faith, these are words already used in this reflection. They are brought together within a particular context in the First Letter of Peter. The important thing is how they are brought together. The Letter speaks of a people like ourselves, ‘though you have not seen him, you love him.’ All Christians have this in common, we love Jesus. And because of this, we will all be ‘filled with glory’. We will obtain the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls. Like the psalmist, our souls should be longing for this.
But there is something of the Thomas in all of us. At times, we act as though we do not believe that the one we love is truly alive and at work amongst us. Although the doors of our hearts are shut and often bolted, the grace of the risen Lord is able to break down these barriers to his resurrection grace at work in his Church.
This is the fundamental position of the Christian. The disciple of Jesus stands before the Lord, conscious of an inability to live the life to which we have been called, by our own effort. We yearn for something we do not yet possess. This is the paradox of our Christian position. We are very conscious of something we have in Christ. But there is something else, a something that lies very much in the future. If this is true of the individual Christian’s perspective, it is also true of our different communities.
There is a growing consensus that the visible institutional unity which was the goal of the first Octaves of Prayer for Christian Unity, may not be achieved now in the manner in which we had hoped for. Receptive ecumenism is not a second best. This is the striving for an appreciation of what each Christian church and community has to offer an understanding of the great mandate left us by the risen Lord – go and make disciples of all the nations. I think Catholics are sometimes surprised to hear, there are twenty-three Easter Rite autonomous particular churches in union with the Bishop of Rome. Not least, the Syro-Malabar Rite to which many of our dear Bridgettine Sisters belong.
Other churches are not in communion with the Holy See. Nevertheless, they have distinctive contributions to make. Pope Francis speaks of the ecumenism of blood. Our Holy Father said, “The sufferings endured by Christians in these last decades have made a unique and invaluable contribution to the unity of Christ’s disciples,” And so we may speak of an ecumenism of martyrdom.
As we pray together in a few moments, the words Jesus taught us to pray, we may keep this truth in mind – the end of the Christian journey for all of us, is the eternal life in which we abide in the fullness of Jesus’ kingdom. And there, we might perfectly assume, there will be the unity for which Christ prayed before he returned to the Father.
