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  Cardinal Etchegaray: “Looking together towards the Lord”

David Murgia

They were eight days filled with meetings, ceremonies and vigils. Eight days dedicated to prayer, to reflection, to ecumenical dialogue. The 33rd Week of prayer for Christian Unity, celebrated starting January 18, day of the opening of the Holy Door of the Basilica of Saint Paul, ended Tuesday January 25, on the feast of the conversion of Saint Paul, with the celebration of vespers presided over by Cardinal Roger Etchegaray. For the week of this year, during the Jubilee year, an expressive and participative character was given, by choosing a representative of other Churches to presided the daily prayer. The same went for the prayer vigil celebrated at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Christ King. The homily was given by Pastor Italo Benedetti of the Baptist Community (we publish a part of that homily in the following pages) in the presence of numerous leaders of Christian churches (Father Makarios, Parish priest of the Greek Orthodox community in Rome, Father Iuevenale, Parish priest of the Romanian Orthodox community, Father Paulos, monk of the Sire-Orthodox Church and Deacon Enosh of the Orthodox-Eritrean community. In representation of the Anglican community Bishop John Baycroft. For the Lutherans, Pastor Hans Michael Uhl. Among Italian reformers, Pastor Valdo Benecchi, President of the Italian Methodists and Pastor Maria Bonafede of the Valdese community. “If there is a prayer”, Cardinal Etchegaray noted during the final homily in the Basilica of Saint Paul, “that requires the inspiration of the Spirit, it’s the prayer for unity, because it takes the aspect of a marathon, even of a race without human-like openings. This prayer puts hope to a hard test, in that Christ did not make a promise of the unity among Christians, but only a prayer”. The words of the President of the Central Committee for the Great Jubilee resound in the Basilica. In the presence of numerous representatives and members of the Christian churches, Cardinal Etchegaray recalled Pope John Paul II’s wish for the unity of all Christians. It’s a moment dense in gathering, an occasion “to urge all Christians to discover and to assume the progresses at the level of joint thought and action. The doctrinal agreements that mark here and there the dialogues of experts have no sense if they do not reach, through a pastoral pedagogy, all the strata of an ecclesial community”. “In the path towards unity”, said Cardinal Roger Etchegaray later, “it’s not about Christians looking each other more in the eyes of each other nor to shake each others hands despite existing divisions, but it’s above all about looking towards the Lord and holding His hand, in common obedience to the Holy Spirit which He has sent us.” “And Saint Paul”, he added, “with his conversion on the road to Damascus, comes to confirm and reassure Christians in search for unity. Everything is possible when, us also following Saint Paul’s example, obtain our support from Christ, Christ Crucified, because the path for unity inevitably crosses at the foot of the Cross, or better crosses the heart pierced by the Saviour”. Cardinal Roger Etchegaray then recalled all the steps already taken towards unity: Antioche, Rome, Alesxandria, Etchiadzin, Constantinople, Wittemberg, Canterbury, Geneva, cities that “now seem closer one to the other… because they are closer to Jerusalem, to the land of Christ”.
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