HOMILY AT THE ECUMENICAL PRAYER WITH THE ECUMENICAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES
IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC IN PRAGUE
8 January 2025
“Do You Believe This?”
The Decisive Ecumenical Challenge Even Today
“Do you believe this?” Jesus asks Martha this crucial question in today's Gospel as she mourns the death of her brother Lazarus and hopes for salvation. Martha answers Jesus' question with a profound confession: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world” (John 11:27). Jesus asks the same question anew every time. And every Christian generation is called to give its answer.
The conciliar foundation of a spiritual ecumenism
The bishops already did this in an exemplary manner just at the beginning of the fourth century when they gathered for the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea. The fierce dispute over the meaning of Jesus, which had flared up Christianity at the time, especially in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, was overcome by the council fathers with the confession that Jesus Christ is not simply a creature of God, but His Son, and that He is therefore ‘equal in essence with the Father’.
This confession of Christ has become the foundation of the common Christian faith, especially since the Council of Nicaea took place at a time when Christianity had not yet been wounded by the many later divisions. Its confession is shared by all Christian churches and can therefore not be underestimated in its ecumenical significance. It consists above all in the fact that – in order to regain the unity of the Church – agreement on the essential content of faith is necessary, not only between churches and ecclesial communities today, but also with the Church of the past and above all with its apostolic origins.
It is therefore an important imperative of the ecumenical hour that the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea be celebrated by all Christian churches in ecumenical fellowship and that its confession of faith in Jesus Christ be appropriated as the answer to Jesus' question: “Do you believe this?”. This anniversary reminds us once again that unity among Christians can only be found in common faith. For unity is founded in the apostolic faith, which is given and entrusted to every new member of the body of Christ at Baptism.
The confession of Christ of the Council of Nicaea is more precisely the foundation of a spiritual ecumenism. This is, of course, a pleonasm. For Christian ecumenism is either spiritual or it is not. This was already evident at the beginning of the ecumenical movement, with the introduction of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which itself was an ecumenical initiative. The ecumenical movement has been a prayer movement from the very beginning. It was prayer for Christian unity that paved the way for the ecumenical movement. Pope Benedict XVI once expressed this auspicious beginning with the vivid image: ‘The ship of ecumenism would never have left the harbour if it had not been set in motion by this comprehensive current of prayer and driven by the blowing of the Holy Spirit.’[1]
Prayer for Christian unity is therefore at the heart of all ecumenical endeavours. With this prayer, we express our conviction of faith that we humans cannot make the unity of the Church ourselves, nor can we decide on its form and timing. We humans can create divisions, as history and unfortunately also the present show. We can only let the Holy Spirit give us unity; and the best preparation for receiving unity as a gift is prayer for unity. The centrality of the prayer for unity reveals that the ecumenical endeavour is above all a spiritual task, carried out in the conviction that it is the Holy Spirit who has begun the ecumenical work and that he will also complete it and show us the way.
Ecumenism of Christ as the heart centre
The great anniversary of the Council of Nicaea naturally invites us to dig a little deeper. It makes us realise that the deepest element of a spiritual ecumenism is the ecumenism of Christ. The heart of Christian ecumenism consists of the common conversion of all Christians and churches to Jesus Christ, in whom unity is already given to us.
This kind of ecumenism of Christ is probably best illustrated by an episode in the history of spiritual friendship between St Francis of Assisi and St Clare. As they wanted to meet again, they met at a stream, but on opposite banks. As they wanted to meet again, they met at a stream, but on opposite banks. As the stream was too wide to cross, they came to the mutual conclusion that they should walk back on both sides to the source of the stream, towards which the stream becomes smaller and narrower. At the source of the stream, they could easily meet and celebrate their spiritual friendship. In the same way, Christian ecumenism can only make progress if we return together along the opposite banks, which have become wider and wider in the course of history, to the source of faith, which we can only find in Jesus Christ, as confessed by the Council Fathers of Nicaea.
In this way, Christian ecumenism most deeply corresponds to the will of the one Lord, common to all Christians, who in his High Priestly Prayer prayed for the unity of His disciples: ‘that all may be one’. In Jesus' prayer, I am always touched by the fact that Jesus does not command unity from His disciples, nor does He demand it from them, but rather He prays for them. This prayer is the best example of what the ecumenical search for the regaining of unity in the light of faith consists of and must consist of. Christian ecumenism can only be the attunement of all Christians to the High Priestly Prayer of the Lord by making His heartfelt concern for unity their own. If ecumenism is not simply interpersonal and purely philanthropic, but truly Christologically motivated and founded, it can be nothing other than ‘participation in the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus’.[2]
Hence the deepest meaning of a spiritual ecumenism in the sense of the ecumenism of Christ comes to light. It consists of allowing ourselves to be drawn into the prayer movement of Jesus towards his heavenly Father and focusing our attention on how Jesus prayed. This reveals that Jesus lived so much in prayer and from prayer that we have to say that His entire life and work was a prayer. In the New Testament, it is above all the evangelist Luke who portrays Jesus in His earthly life as a thoroughly praying Son of God, whose existential centre is the dialogue with his heavenly Father, with whom He lives in the innermost unity.
Without this attitude of prayer, the figure of Jesus cannot be understood at all. This is precisely what the Council Fathers of Nicaea sensitively recognised. For it is in Jesus’ prayer that he appears most clearly as the Son of the heavenly Father, and the mystery of Jesus’ Sonship forms the centre of the Council of Nicaea's confession of Christ. The innermost mystery of Jesus testified to in Holy Scripture, that He is the faithful Son of the Father, with whom He is intimately united in prayer, was expressed at the Council of Nicaea with the word ‘homoousios’ - ‘equal in essence with the Father’. This word is the appropriate interpretation of Jesus’ prayer and the most profound interpretation of Jesus’ life and death, which was characterised throughout by the Son's dialogue with the Father.
The lasting relevance of the Council of Nicaea
With the Confession of Nicaea, the Council once again spoke with the voice of Martha in Bethany, who, in response to Jesus' question - ’Do you believe this?’ - made her confession of Christ. ‘Do you believe this?’ - This question is also posed to us today. If we look honestly into the world of faith today, we have to admit that we find ourselves in a similar situation to the fourth century. Quite a few Christians today are certainly touched by all the human dimensions of the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, but the confession of faith that Jesus of Nazareth is the only begotten Son of God, who is equal in essence with his heavenly Father, and thus the church's faith in Christ, causes them great difficulty. Even in the Church and in the ecumenical movement, it often no longer seems possible today to perceive the face of God Himself in the man Jesus of Nazareth and to confess Him as the Son of God and not simply see in Him a human being, albeit a particularly good and outstanding one.
But if Jesus had only been a man who lived two thousand years ago, then He would have irrevocably receded into the historical past; and only our own memory could more or less bring Him back into our present. But in this way Jesus could not be the only Son of God in whom God Himself is present with us. Only if the Church's confession is true – that Jesus Christ is both true God and true man and thus shares in the presence of God, which embraces all time – can we honestly confess Him as ‘equal in essence with the Father’.
‘Do you believe that?’ - With this question, the lasting significance of the Council of Nicaea once again comes before our eyes. The Council is therefore not only of historical interest; rather, it retains its topicality in today's faith situation in the Church and ecumenism, and bringing its confession of Christ to life is an ecumenical challenge of the first order. The Council invites us and expects us to respond to the Lord's question – “Do you believe this?’ – to answer with Marta with conviction and courage today too: ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.’ Amen.
[1] Benedict XVI, Liturgy of vespers on the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul for the conclusion of prayer for Christian unity on 25 January 2008.
[2] W. Kardinal Kasper, Ökumene und Spiritualität. In: Ders., Wege der Einheit. Perspektiven für die Ökumene (Freiburg i.Br. 2005) 203-226, zit. 204.