This week we begin the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The Week begins on the Feast of the Confession of St. Peter, when we recall Peter’s confession of faith, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). It ends next Tuesday, on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9).  

We were blest to start off this academic year with a retreat led for us by Bishop Bruce Meyers. Bishop Bruce’s background in the United Church and his lifelong passion for ecumenism, as well as his being an alumnus of Dio, allows him to share an important personal and theological perspective on ecumenism. He reminded us of the “Lund Principle” that guides ecumenical work around the world today. 

In 1952, the World Council of Churches held a Faith and Order conference in the town of Lund, Switzerland. The conference concluded that churches ought to “act together in all matters except those in which deep differences of conviction compel them to act separately.” 

In this year of ‘strategic alliance’ between UTC and Dio, and in our ecumenical relationship with the Presbyterian College within the Montreal School of Theology, we are in many ways seeking to manifest the Lund Principle. We are working to do together all that we can. And within our student body we have students from several other traditions as well. It allows for a real richness of learning. 

I have noticed that it is often in the smallest and lesser-resourced parts of the Church that ecumenism becomes a living reality. In small, remote communities we often find ecumenical churches, including ‘shared ministries’ of United and Anglican congregations together as one church, or ‘full communion communities’ of Anglican and Evangelical Lutheran congregations who have amalgamated, or churches of one tradition served by an ordained leader from another. In long-term care homes where I have led monthly Anglican communion services, the congregation will be made up of Christians of all backgrounds. And there are those, of course, who have suggested that our own strategic alliance was prompted more by a scarcity of financial resources than by any great ecumenical vision of church unity. 

There may be some truth to that. Regardless, it does not take away from the very real gifts our learning and worshipping and working together gives. If ministry leaders from any Christian tradition are learning through lived experience to better understand those different from ourselves, we are then able to bring that richness to all with whom we will minister going forward.  

Christian Unity is not about everyone being the same. That is not the point.  

The point, rather, is to celebrate that there is so much more that draws us together than there is that separates us, and to seek in all things to remember Christ’s prayer at the last supper: “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” (John 17:11) 

Heather

This message was written by Heather McCance for this week’s Wingèd Ox, a weekly news digest distributed to the college community.