Christian Unity (Ecumenism)

Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew I in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Christianity, all denominations combined, is the Religion of one in three inhabitants of our planet. It is the largest Religion with 2.4 billion followers in 2015 and is growing slightly faster than the world population.  

But these figures mask great fragmentations as Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Anglicans, Evangelicals, divided by history, often in competition, present diverse Faces and are themselves fragmented into multiple Churches, distinguished by organization, practices, or the corpus of Faith.

Continents and countries show the same contrasting aspects: in Europe, Christianity is declining while elsewhere it is progressing.  

In Asia, the proportion of Christians, all denominations combined, rose from 4.5% in 1910 to 13.1% in 2010. There it is an image of modernity.  

In Africa, the number of Christians has multiplied by more than 60, rising from 8 million in 1910 to 516 million in 2010.  

The fragmentation of believers is certainly not unique to Christianity alone, but division there is the cause of misunderstanding and Scandal when it leads to rivalry, or worse, as structures often raise artificial walls supposedly to defend "their specificity."

From division to unique diversity

The unity of Christians is by no means uniformity. Its goal is to replace walls with bridges. This unity is often called ecumenism when this movement concerns confessional structures.

It is distinct from interreligious dialogue which is similar to it in many ways but concerns bridges built toward non-Christian believers.  

Both build "God’s scaffold" in which the steps, essential to construct the whole, are of the same nature (the search for God), but not the same level (the fullness of Revelation).  

The unity of Christians finds its source in the priestly prayer of Christ on the evening of the Last Supper:

I do not pray for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. That they all may be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you; that they also may be one in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. And the glory which you gave me I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one: I in them, and you in me. That they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them as you loved me.

This prayer, willed by Christ at the time of his Passion, was actualized and became a living movement through the initiative of Paul Wattson in 1908. He created the Octave for Church unity, which took place for the first time from January 18 to 25, 1908. This Episcopal priest had created in 1898 a Franciscan religious community, the Franciscans of the Atonement within the American Anglican Church. For him, it was good unity centered around the See of Rome.  

This ecumenism born among Anglicans was accepted by the Church thanks to initiatives of Catholic ecumenists, such as Abbé Paul Couturier (1881-1953), who founded the Week of Unity in January 1939. It extends from January 18, the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, to January 25, the feast of the conversion of Saint Paul. Its goal is to pray for unity "as Christ wants it, by the means He wills."  

The later liturgical elimination of the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter at Antioch (a feast that corresponded well to a historical reality) broke the symbolic framework in which Abbé Paul Couturier had given a liturgical and deeply reconciliatory meaning to the Week of Unity.

He also founded, in 1942, the Dombes Group with Swiss Protestant theologians. It was at this same period, in 1940, that Roger Schutz, a Protestant pastor known as Brother Roger, founded the ecumenical community of Taizé. He died there murdered on August 16, 2005.  

One had to wait for the Vatican II council for ecumenism to officially, and not without difficulty, enter the Catholic Church.  

The Council promulgated major documents on ecumenism on November 21, 1964 and on interreligious dialogue on October 28, 1965, but more than fifty years later, it must be acknowledged that unity is still to come.

This unity, promised by ecumenism, is nevertheless a hallmark of our time. It prepares the ultimate restoration of Christianity toward the advent of Christ "as he wills, when he wills" through the difficulties we try to overcome, notably the reestablishment of the central feast of Easter on a unique date for all Christians.

It is the insistent request transmitted by Jesus to Vassula Rydén (1942-2024), a Greek-Orthodox mystic. Beyond reluctances, it sparks a large ecumenical movement.

It is also the request conveyed, in the 1990s as well, by the Virgin Mary to Myrna Al-Akhras, a Syrian Greek-Catholic from Soufanieh. On March 24, 1983, she told her in particular:

The Church is the kingdom of Heaven on earth. Whoever divided it sins and whoever rejoiced in its division has sinned. Whoever divided it has no more love in him. Gather it. I tell you "pray, pray, pray". You will teach generations the words of unity, love, and faith. Pray for the inhabitants of the Earth and Heaven.

On October 15, 1999, Mgr Accoli inaugurated in Rome, via Aurelia, the Notre-Dame de Soufanieh Center for Christian unity and interreligious dialogue.

The unity of Christians in the work of Maria Valtorta

This cause is present in three major ways in the writings of Maria Valtorta:  

1. Through divine catecheses. These are recorded in the various excerpts reported below.
2. Through the offering she made of herself for this cause, in imitation of the Blessed Maria Gabriella Sagheddu (1914-1939), whose life she discovered in 1942.  
3. Through the request Jesus made her to link the Week of Unity to the week of Divine Mercy in the octave of Easter.  

Her offering for the cause of unity

The life of the Blessed Maria Gabriella of Unity (1914-1939), who inspired Maria Valtorta, had the brilliance of that of Thérèse of Lisieux or Gemma Galgani: she died at 25 after three years of religious life. She was born at the beginning of the First World War and died at the beginning of the Second.

Maria Sagheddu was born in Sardinia. Her character was strong, sometimes rebellious. She feared that it might prevent her entrance into the Trappist convent of Grottaferrata in Lazio, but she was eventually accepted under the name Maria-Gabriella of Unity.

Her abbess, Mother Maria Pia Gullini, very sensitive to the ecumenical movement, had been able to communicate this cause to the community. At the invitation of Abbé Paul Couturier, she once made a request for prayer and offering for the great cause of Christian unity. Sister Maria Gabriella felt deeply concerned by this Call and was driven to offer her young life for this cause. She felt Called "even when I want not to think about it." She had confided to the Mother Superior her great devotion to Mary's Fiat at the Annunciation: Behold the handmaid of the Lord.  

The development of this strong character was rapid and without hesitation. Knowing only one desire: "God’s will, His glory," she conformed to Jesus, who "having loved His own who were in the world, loved them to the end."  

The very evening of her offering she was struck by a fulminant tuberculosis, she who had always been in good health. She died after fifteen months of suffering.

On the evening of April 23, 1939, Maria Gabriella ended her long agony, in total abandonment to the will of God. The bells rang loudly at the end of Vespers on Good Shepherd Sunday, that Sunday when the Gospel proclaimed: "There will be one flock and one shepherd".

Sister Maria Gabriella was beatified by John Paul II on January 25, 1983, at the conclusion of the Week of Unity. Later, in his encyclical Ut unum sint, dated May 25, 1995, he proposed her as a model of commitment by prayer until “the total and unconditional offering of life to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.” The cause of Unity was a real discovery for Maria Valtorta who had ignored that one could pray for it "before Jesus guided her" to the nun from Grottaferrata. She then decided to join the oblation:

When, in 1942, I learned what Sister Maria-Gabriella was living, I had only one regret, which lasts still: that God keeps me so long consuming myself when I am in such a hurry to accomplish the sacrifice, provided that our poor separated brothers return to the Mystical Body.

Maria-Gabriella and Maria Valtorta could not meet: the former was not yet a nun when the latter became bedridden. But communion nevertheless exists: when Maria Valtorta is in the throes of the Trials of the night of faith, she finds her comfort in the battle fought before her by Maria-Gabriella.

My physical, moral, and spiritual sufferings accumulate… Everything makes me suffer... I want nothing, since I do not have God. I reread Sister Maria-Gabriella: more than ever I feel similar to her in suffering. … And God does not come. I pray as the Father tells me. But God does not come. He drives me mad with pain. Nevertheless, even in these conditions, I renew the offering of myself for the usual intentions: Peace, the reign of Jesus, etc., putting as the only reservation to be taken back home (to [[Wikipedia:Viareggio|Viareggio]). Sister Gabriella herself had put a reservation, yet she was an angelic being. So I can put one too. One should not To ask the impossible of a human Soul human. And those who preach total, unconditional self-giving are precisely those who themselves cannot bear the slightest scratch.

Divine mercy and unity of Churches, in the octave of Easter

Later Christ asks Maria Valtorta to pray that the Week of Unity be transferred to the Week of Mercy, in the Easter octave.

Sister Faustina Kowalska (Saint Faustina) died in 1938. Excerpts of her little diary (Dzienniczek) began circulating. Her novena to the Divine Mercy spread rapidly: Maria Valtorta adhered to the request of Jesus.

On April 16, 1954, Good Friday, Jesus asked Maria Valtorta to link this Divine Mercy novena to prayer for the unity of Churches:

At the same time as the Novena to Divine Mercy, he asked her, do once again the one for the unity of Churches that is done from January 18 to 25 during the Octave of Unity. Do it every year from Good Friday to the Saturday before the Sunday after Easter. This is my wish and that of many other inhabitants of Heaven or ministers of God on Earth.

What Jesus prescribes is thus to make the Week of Unity as the Week of Mercy in the central octave of Easter. He continues:

Know that for me and the Most Holy Trinity, for my holy Mother, […] prayers for the Unity of Churches and for the conversion of sinners of all kinds are the most welcome more than all others, because they lead to Heaven, for eternity, a very large number of Souls, who otherwise, because of their sin Against the Holy, Unique, True, Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church and Against its commandments, would have gone forever to Hell.

In "The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me"

• Here are brothers. I want this to be the name you give one another and that you consider yourselves as such. You are like one Family. When is a Family prosperous and admired by the world? When there is union and harmony. If one son becomes the enemy of another, if a brother harms another, can the prosperity of this Family ever last? No. It is in vain that the father of the Family tries to work, to smooth difficulties, and to impose himself on the world. His efforts are fruitless, because resources crumble, difficulties increase, the world mocks this state of perpetual struggles that fragment affections and Goods.

In other works by Maria Valtorta

The Notebooks of 1943

• Note of May 10: I am happy to have prayed and to pray thus for the unity of Churches. I did not know one prayed for that. Jesus, my unique master, guided me, as usual, even in that. Just as he guided me to his servant, Sister Maria-Gabriella.
• Catechesis of December 11: Those who must gather the lineages around the Cross to prepare the gathering of Christ will have a hand of father and king. And no lineage will fail the Call, with its best descendants. Then I will come and put my power to defend it against all snares and tricks, attacks and crimes of Satan against my earthly Jerusalem — the militant Church. I will pour out my spirit on all the redeemed of the Earth.  
• Catechesis of December 29: Only God, O Christians, could give you this Name as a sign of salvation for all the lineages of the earth.

The Notebooks from 1945 to 1950

• Catechesis of July 16, 1945: It has been fifteen days, perhaps more, that the dear Voice urges my Heart with these words: "Remember your separated brothers. Remember that you are a victim for them also. Remember that they were supported by your friend Gabriella, who is a Trappistine.
• Catechesis of December 31, 1947: But if my death is not bloody, it is none the less an outpouring of my Vitality, this slow death amid the tortures of so many ailments that have kept me bedridden for fifteen years after having put me to the standing torture four years earlier, and made me suffer since 1920. But I willingly suffer for my "separated brothers". I want to obtain their return to the Church of Rome.
  Even in the Work and the dictations, Jesus has referred several times to those poor separated brothers from their true Sheepfold, and I nurture true and deep love for them, the sacrifice does not weigh down on me, because I want to see them in the Life, the Way, and the Truth.
  When, in 1942, I learned what Sister M. Gabriella, the Trappistine of Grottaferrata, lived, I had only one regret, which lasts still: that God keep me so long consuming myself when I am in such a hurry to accomplish the sacrifice, provided that our poor separated brothers return to the Mystical Body.

Lessons on Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans

• Lesson No. 38: Those who want to be Christians, true Christians, must have for their separated brothers the same feelings that Paul had for the Jews, his separated brothers. Prodigal sons of different kinds. Some believe in Christ but are not members of the Mystical Body, since they are not united to the trunk of the Mystical Vine, which is the Church of Rome. Others are members of that Church of Rome but are dead members. They received Baptism and other Sacraments of the true Church, but subsequently, ill will caused them to fall into mortal sins or into habitual sin, or Good they were struck by ecclesiastical sanctions having become victims of heresies of various types: superstitions, idolatry, even towards man, dealings with the devil, membership of anti-Christian sects, spiritism, magic, or other similar things.

Autobiography

• Pages 466-468: God has used all that I have known, experienced, and suffered to advance me in his ways […] Other Religions or theories have increased my love, my faith, my consecration to him.
  Even if other Religions have allowed an increase in me of my identification to God and my spiritual improvement. I have always thought, since I learned of the Doctrines of other Religions, that in all there is a fragment of the true faith, a fragment of our faith. One might almost say, to give a human comparison, that from the unique true Religion, which was given by God to Moses and later confirmed by the Word of God, fragments have detached that carry with them crumbs of truth. […] And the debris fell on the earth where they formed the seeds of other Religions which, despite their errors, still retain a more or less important fragment of truth.
  Examining Religions and their codes of morals, I notice this reflection of divine light shining despite the addition of erroneous elements, and I feel increasingly encouraged to faithfully follow the requirements of the morality which is mine.

In fundamental Christian texts

In the catechism of the Catholic Church

• CCC 813 to 816: The Church is one.
• CCC 817 to 819: The wounds of unity.
• CCC 820 to 822: Towards unity.

Extraordinary assembly of representatives of the Catholic Church, convened to discuss and collectively decide on important issues.