The ecumenical movement is reaching its maturity as the world approaches the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation in 2017. A small group of ecumenical German Christians were asked to develop materials for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, January 18-25. They chose the Berlin wall at the end of the cold war as a symbol of the division between the churches. The idea was adopted by the World Council of Church’s Faith and Order Commission and the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and was proposed to ecumenical Christians worldwide.
“The image of the wall is very current today,” said Father Anthony Currer, who coordinates the Vatican contribution to the week of prayer. The U.S. political discussion of extending the wall along the border with Mexico, Pope Francis’ frequent admonitions about building bridges rather than walls, the global refugee crisis — all of that makes the powerful symbol of a wall even more potent, said Father Currer, an official at the Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
The German group was chosen to write the reflections for 2017 because this year marks the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, an event that exposed the corruption in the Western Church and brought personal spiritual unity between the people and the Bible.
Pope Francis has been engaged in other major ecumenical events in 2016 to mark the anniversary. He met in February with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow; traveled to Greece in April to visit refugees with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople; and, along with Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, in early October, he commissioned pairs of Catholic and Anglican bishops to work and pray together in their home regions. “The things Catholics see the pope doing encourage them to participate,” Father Currer said. The papal events also support the kind of prayer and hope that Germans displayed on both sides of the Berlin Wall throughout the Cold War.
“The wall separating Christians seems to be equally immovable and entrenched,” as the Berlin Wall was during the Cold War, Father Currer said. But the continued prayer of Christians is “a way to show our hope and faith that God will bring his church to unity.”
The ecumenical movement is all about bringing the churches into full, visible, sacramental unity with Rome, including its false doctrines. “All the world wondered…” right back into the lap of Rome. See Revelation 13:3.