Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Homily Preached by Abbot Paul at Llandaff Cathedral

January 24th 2010

Yesterday was the feast of St Cadoc and it was interesting to hear again the story of his life. How different South Wales was in those days: for one thing, it included Herefordshire. We read of monasteries and seminaries with thousands of men and women engaged in the search for Holy Wisdom while at the same time filled with courage and enthusiasm for the missionary activity of the Church. It's a world far removed from our own, and yet the struggles, the hardships and the opposition was, if anything, worse than today. We are told that Cadoc ended his life as a martyr for Christ among the pagan Saxons.

Although, as Christians, we often look back with longing and nostalgia to the past, whether it's remote Celtic times or just a few decades ago, we cannot live in the past. We can certainly learn from the past but we can't turn the clocks back. In the quest for Christian Unity, we cannot undo the Reformation in the West or the Great Schism between the Greek and Latin Churches. There is much to learn and to regret in the history of the Church, but Christ is always calling us to look at him, to listen to his voice, to follow his teaching and example and with him to move forward to where he is leading us. This is one of the important lessons that St Paul teaches the Corinthians in the text we have just heard.

We are to look back and consider our own call so that we might remember and never forget that God has chosen us in Christ, no matter who or what we were in the past, to become totally new creatures in Christ today. When Christ called us, and we believe that he continues to call us every day, indeed every moment, so when Christ calls us, he invites us to a life of radical transformation in Him through grace. "God is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption," writes St Paul.
When Jesus chooses and calls twelve of his disciples to follow him ever more closely as apostles, that is what he is calling them to, to know him as the wisdom of God in whom they will experience "righteousness, sanctification and redemption". Unlike the world that obliges us to boast of ourselves and to live a life of intrinsic selfishness, in Christ God calls us to acknowledge him as Lord and Saviour and to live no longer for ourselves but for him in the mystery of the Cross. "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord." Before choosing the twelve St Luke tells us that Jesus spent the night in prayer to God. It is in this intimate relationship with the Father, more than in any other way, that Jesus reveals his true identity, his divine Sonship. And in calling twelve of the disciples to be apostles, his desire and intention is to share that special relationship with them. He teaches them to pray not only in words but in the sacrifice and humility of the Cross.

We also heard in the Old Testament reading this morning how the child Samuel was taught to pray when he kept hearing a strange voice calling him, "Samuel, Samuel". Eli, that kindly old priest in the Temple, said to him, "When you hear that voice again just reply, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening." How important that simple prayer is, for it contains in a few words the heart of the Church's experience and teaching on prayer. Above and before all else, prayer is listening, listening attentively and with a spirit of obedience to the voice of God, to God's word, discerning his will, waiting on him in silence.

We learn from today's readings, then, what it means to be a Christian, and it's not at all complicated. In fact, it's too simple. Perhaps that's why over the centuries and millennia we have managed to make it so difficult and incomprehensible that people today turn away from the Church and look for something easier to cope with, even if it's the lowest form of materialism. To be a Christian simply means to put Christ at the very centre of our lives, listening to his voice, following in his footsteps, making him the source of life: put even more simply, to live and to breathe Christ.

So what of Christian Unity today? There are still serious theological and ecclesiological differences that separate the Churches, though some quite spectacular advances have been made, such as the agreed statement on atonement and justification between the Lutheran and Catholic Churches, an agreement which is neither victory for one party nor capitulation for the other but the fruit of a joint search for truth. The examples are many, too countless to be listed in a short homily. Two things are certain: firstly, we know each other so much better than ever before and this knowledge deepens our friendship, respect and love; secondly, the desire for unity cannot be quenched and will not go away: we will continue to work and to pray for it. It is the will of God made manifest in Jesus.

But there is a final point, and perhaps this is the most important. We believe that all Christians, even those who differ most from us, are truly trying to "seek God with a sincere heart" and that God does not turn away from "those whose faith is known to him alone." In other words, there already exists between all Christians a unity in Christ that cannot be destroyed even by the lack of full communion. If our lives are truly centred on Christ, if we can say with St Paul, "It is not I who live but Christ who lives in me," then in Christ we are already one. It remains for us to work and to pray day and night to bring about fully, through God's grace, that unity which the integrity of the Body of Christ demands and proclaims, and that unity of which the Holy Trinity is both sign and fulfilment.