A major focus of my life over the last couple months has been the
effort to build relationships among Christians in the Washington, DC area in
advance of this Saturday’s Unity Factor Forum with John Armstrong (it is still
not too late to register!!). One of the dividends of that work has been getting
to know Fr. Tom Ryan and the work of the Paulist Office for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations. Fr. Tom is the head of the American office, located on
the campus of St. Paul’s College in Washington, DC. The Unity Factor Forum will
be held at this site and Fr. Tom will be our host that day.
In preparation for the Forum, and as an outgrowth of my
growing friendship with Fr. Tom, I have been reading articles by him. He is a gifted writer whose insights grow out of decades of work as a Paulist priest focused in the area of
Christian unity. Here is a taste of his work from an article entitled “Spiritual
Ecumenism: Fiber of Fluff”:
Prayer is and will always hold the first
place in unity efforts because it is prayer that most changes our hearts, and
it is our hearts that most need to be changed.
The conversion implied begins with
ourselves, our ways of stereotyping others (“Orthodox always…”; “Anglicans do …”;
“Evangelicals say…;”), our smug sense of superiority, our lack of interest in
the changing understandings taking place between our church and another through
the dialogues….
Spiritual ecumenism is also an exchange of
spiritual gifts—contemplative and charismatic ways of praying, lectio divina,
devotional practices, the theology of icons, the tradition of spiritual
direction, effective approaches to youth and young adults, the practice of
annual retreats and monthly desert days, methods of singing, preaching, and
sharing the faith….
Spiritual
ecumenism must seek out and serve life. It must be concerned with everyday
human experiences as well as with the great questions of justice and peace and
the preservation of creation. Through the prayer and the sharing, our hearts
are turned more fully toward Christ, and the closer we come to him, the more we
discover ourselves in unity. And in the exchange of gifts, what is lacking in
each of our traditions finds its needed complement. The ecumenical endeavor
thus becomes a pilgrimage to the fullness of catholicity which Jesus Christ
intends for his Church.
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