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INTENTION : |
That all Christians may be faithful to the Lord's teaching by striving with prayer and fraternal charity to restore ecclesial communion and by collaborating to meet the challenges facing humanity.
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In all the faithful there must always be a growing awareness of the commitment that implies the will of Jesus expressed in his prayer to the Father on the eve of His Passion: "That they may all be one" (Jn 17:21). [...]
All this has enabled closer contact with other Churches and Ecclesial Communities and new forms of cooperation to be developed. Ecumenical translations of the Sacred Scriptures have been very important in this regard. Christians of different Churches and Ecclesial Communities are working together at the service of a suffering and needy humanity, for the protection of human life and its unalienable dignity, to safeguard Creation, and against the injustices that afflict so many people and peoples.
As a Bishop of the Church which presides in universal charity, I wish to express my gratitude to all those who in the course of these 50 years have been lavish in various ways at the service of the reconciliation and the communion among all believers in Christ, particularly to those who have worked in the Secretariat for Christian Unity and in the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. While we give thanks, we must recognize that among Christians, we are still divided, and that disagreement on new anthropological and ethical subjects make our journey toward unity more complicated. However, we must not surrender to discouragement and resignation, but continue to trust in God who plants in the hearts of Christians the seeds of love and of unity, in order to confront with renewed momentum today's ecumenical challenges: to cultivate spiritual ecumenism, to turn to advantage the ecumenism of blood, to walk together on the path of the Gospel.
Spiritual ecumenism, which reaches a high point in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, lives and develops through countless channels, which truly only the Lord sees, but which we, too, often have the joy of knowing: it is a worldwide network of prayerful moments which, at parish and international levels, spread the oxygen of the authentic ecumenical spirit through the body of the Church; a network of acts, which see us united and working together in so many works of charity; and it is also a sharing of prayer, of meditation and other texts which circulate on the web and can contribute to raising awareness, respect and mutual esteem.
With regard to the ecumenism of blood, Unitatis Redintegratio itself invited that we esteem it by acknowledging the God-given capacity of our brothers and sisters of other Churches and Christian communities to bear witness to Christ even to the supreme sacrifice (cf. n. 4). There has been no shortage of such witnesses in these 50 years and they continue even in our day. It is up to us to welcome them with faith and allow their strength to impel us to convert to an ever fuller brotherhood. Those who persecute Christ in his faithful make no differentiation between confessions: they persecute them simply because they are Christians.
In these months, meeting so many non-Catholic Christians, or reading their letters, I have been able to see how, despite the open questions that still separate us, there is a strong and widespread desire to walk together, to pray, to know and love the Lord, to cooperate in service and in solidarity with the weak and the suffering. I am convinced of this: on a common path, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and learning from one another we can grow in the communion which already unites us.
Dear brothers and sisters, 50 years after the promulgation of Unitatis Redintegratio, the pursuit of full Christian unity remains a priority for the Catholic Church, and thus it is daily one of my chief concerns. Unity first and foremost is a gift of God and the work of the Holy Spirit, but we are all called to cooperate, always and in every circumstance. I therefore thank you for all of your work and, in entrusting you to the maternal intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I ask you to please pray for me and for my ministry, and I bless you from my heart.
POPE FRANCIS
Letter to participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council
for Promoting Christian Unity for the 50th Anniversary of the Decree "Unitatis Redintegratio"
20 November 20 2014
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