Longing for the Rose of Unity 
Thomas Michel, S.J.[1] 

In the light of the theme of the Fourth Congress of Asian Theologians, the task of our discipline group (interfaith dialogue) is to reflect together on how we might, in Asia, build ecumenical communities; how we might discover new and better ways of encountering one another. No matter what our particular ecclesiology, each of our Churches wants to be a community of disciples united under the reign of One God, joined by faith in the one Lord Jesus Christ, inspired and guided by the One Spirit. Thus, building a sense of community of people who have a common vision and way of life and finding ways to express this vision is central to the self-understanding of all our Churches.

The central insight of the ecumenical movement is that the discipleship to which Christ has called all of us goes beyond and transcends the particular Church tradition to which we belong. I, for example, am a Catholic. I thank God for calling me to follow Christ according to the Catholic understanding of the Christian faith and to practice my faith according to the wisdom and spirituality developed by generations of Catholic Christians of previous ages. I feel a sense of community with Catholics around the world. I can truly say that I love being part of the universal Catholic community. But in the ecumenical movement, I hear God calling me to something even greater, more profound, more effective as a witness to our discipleship, that is, to take part in building a visible community of all those who call themselves Christians, who are united in the One God and Father, in One Lord, in One Spirit.

I believe that each of you can say the same. You are Lutherans, Reformed, Anglican, Orthodox, Evangelical etc., and you welcome and praise God for this belonging, not simply as an accident of history, but rather as a trust given to you by God to profess, preserve and develop those charismata that have characterized your community down through the centuries. Yet, like me, you too are called to something greater, to commit yourself to build fellowship with all Christ's disciples, of whatever Church or ecclesial tradition. This is the common vision with which God has inspired the ecumenical movement, certainly one of the greatest works of the Spirit in the past century.

How can we build that one united, visible community? How can we achieve a goal that still seems so far off that we must constantly pray for hope to keep us going when the evidence seems to indicate that the "ecumenical winter" will be with us for a long time? I will share with you five elements of ecumenical wisdom that seem important to me.

1.    In community, we are all enriched by each other. As you know, my church, the Catholic Church, came late to the ecumenical movement. After its inception at the beginning of the 20^th Century among Protestant missionary societies, the ecumenical movement was given new impetus by the 1920 letter of the Ecumenical Patriarch which encouraged the Orthodox Churches to involve themselves in the ecumenical search for unity. The formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948 was a decisive step taken by the Orthodox and the Churches of the Reformation towards the building of ecumenical community.

When the Catholic Church in 1965 committed itself to work with other churches for full Church unity, we benefited from the many years of hard work, theological reflection, and organizational experimentation that other Christian groups and Churches had been doing for many decades. In short, we Catholics have been enriched by your efforts at unity, and for this we are grateful. Taking part in the ecumenical movement enables us not only to be further enriched by your reflections on the demands of the Gospel but also to offer our own experiences and insights by which we hope that God will choose to enrich your faith.

My point is simple. In ecumenism, our primary focus must not be on institutional restructuring or merger, but rather on being occasions of God's grace for one another, so that in ecumenical community, God can lead us all forward and make us more fully, more deeply faithful to Christ's message. At the deepest level, ecumenism is not about reorganization, it is about renewal.

2.    Unity does not mean uniformity. What we seek in the ecumenical movement is not a leveling off or a stripped-down version of Christianity where differences are denied or ignored. As Pope John Paul II stated in his 1995 encyclical on Christian unity, Ut Unum Sint, there is a legitimate diversity which is not an obstacle to unity but rather adorns the beauty of Christ's bride, the one Church of Christ ("that legitimate diversity is in no way opposed to Church unity, but rather enhances her splendor" UUS, 50, 55). Diversity must be seen as something positive.

Our search for unity does not mean striving to make one tradition prevail over all others or to impose one set of theological formulations or organizational structures on others. It means, rather, that our ecumenical commitment should lead us to a common search for what is essential, and to discern that unchanging heart of our Christian faith from what is historically or culturally conditioned. Through this process of communal discernment, the ecumenical movement can lead our Churches to a renewed understanding of the core of Christ's message in the context of our contemporary societies, and can enable us to make a critical examination of the ways in which the Christian community has historically and culturally lived that message. Working together, we can appreciate what has been good and useful in all our Christian forebearers have achieved, as well as what has been superceded by the needs of our world and thus demands change.

Structures become fossilized and fail to keep up with the changing realities of our ecumenical relationships. Theological formulations that spoke well and accurately to the Churches at one period or place need reexamination as concepts, meaning of terms, and philosophical presuppositions continue to evolve. The ecumenical movement can be a catalyst for renewal by bringing us together into discernment on the nature of "legitimate diversity".

3.    We need each other to grow. One of the most startling passages of the encyclical Ut Unum Sint is when Pope John Paul II appeals to "all the pastors and theologians of our Churches" to help him to understand better how he can best carry out his Petrine office. The Pope believes that as the successor of Peter he has been entrusted with the task of encouraging and strengthening his brothers in unity. But how to do this? The Pope acknowledges that "this is an immense task, one which I cannot carry out by myself" (UUS, 96). The Pope is confessing that even to carry out the very office which he believes to have been given him by God, he needs the help and advice of other Christians.

My point here is not to invite a discussion on the papacy or how it might best be exercised, but rather to underline the challenging fact that none of us, and no one of our Churches, has all the answers. We all stand in need of the fraternal input, criticisms, counsel, and insights of fellow Christians of all Churches. We grow by inviting and considering thoughtfully the views of fellow Christians. Each of our Churches upholds, proclaims, and emphasizes certain elements of the one message of Christ, but we need to hear from other Churches their objections, the reasons why they have rejected or deemphasized some aspects or formulations in favor of others, and the ways in which our interpretations might be complemented and transformed by others' thoughtful observations. By theologizing together, we build ecumenical community that can grow by mutual reflection and correction.

4.    We cannot define the limits of ecumenical community. The ecumenical movement began among Churches of the Reformation, expanded by the commitment of Orthodox Churches, and in recent decades includes the enthusiastic participation of the Catholic Church. However, as Konrad Raiser has pointed out in recent addresses, we must beware of defining the limits of the movement as a new "Protestant-Orthodox-Catholic" ecumenical orthodoxy.

Each of our historical Churches must be challenged by the fact that the fastest growing forms of Christianity are among those who call themselves Evangelical or Pentecostal. They are growing not only because of a strong missionary zeal (which we are often tempted to dismiss as "proselytism" or "sheep stealing"), but also because they concentrate on key elements of the Gospel message, which they preach forcefully and live fervently.

Although many Evangelicals and Pentecostals reject the ecumenical movement as misguided, irrelevant or, in some cases, as "diabolical," Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity today displays wide variety in approach to ecumenism. Some self-identifying Evangelicals, many of whom are members of the historical Churches, are willing and even eager to discuss with us the values and drawbacks of ecumenism. Many are discovering the need to be rooted in Christian experience as it has been lived down through the centuries. An unbridgeable gap between "ecumenical" and "evangelical" Christianity can only work to the disservice of both parties.

5.    Ecumenism opens us to the wider world. The experience of the early missionary societies that gave original impetus to ecumenism was that the divisions among the Churches are a counter-witness against Gospel values. Although professing to be united in Christ, we give witness to disunity. A Muslim scholar in Malaysia once asked me, "Why do you Christians not want to pray together? Every little group has to worship in its own church."

The ecumenical movement challenges us to move beyond narrow confessional concerns to respond together to the needs of our world. First of all, this means a cooperative approach to the poor, to the marginalized, to victims of discrimination, to migrants and refugees. It means addressing together and offering a common Christian response to the great issues of our time: peace, pluralism, good government, HIV/AIDS, interreligious harmony, the status of women, the rights of children, protection of the environment. If Christians hope to achieve any significant results in such fields, we must first be willing to work with fellow Christians and then, together, find effective ways to cooperate with like-minded followers of other religions who share many of our ideals.

Conclusion: carrying on in hope. As Christians, we constantly ask God for "the greatest gifts," for faith, hope, and love. In ecumenism, we are brought back to St. Paul's conviction that we share "one Lord, one faith, one baptism," a spiritual reality that goes far deeper than any of our individual denominations. In ecumenism, we commit ourselves to build a community of love that transcends the limits of our own churches, so that we can fulfill Jesus' command, "By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." Ecumenism also teaches us to work in hope, without demanding to see the results of our efforts, trusting that God will accomplish all in God's own good time. In this "winter of ecumenism," for those of us who long for the beautiful rose of Christian unity, that hope is perhaps best described in the popular song:

When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes
The Rose.

_______________________
Notes:

[1] Thomas Michel <[email protected]> is a Catholic priest originally from St. Louis, USA, but who joined the Indonesian province of the Jesuits (Society of Jesus). He has a Ph.D. degree in Islam from the University of Chicago and is a specialist on issues of Muslim-Christian dialogue. He is currently heading the Jesuits' Interreligious Dialogue desk based in Rome.