Unity for Christian Prayer
Few days prior to the kickoff of the “Week of Prayer for Christian Unity” 2022, celebrated between January 18 and 25 of every year, preparations are still ongoing for this annual Christian week. Here is the message of the Director of the MECC Theological and Ecumenical Department Father Antoine Al Ahmar in which he presented the awaited Week of Prayer. He wrote it for the 2022 booklet under the title “Unity for Christian Prayer”.
Father Antoine Al Ahmar
Director of the MECC Theological and Ecumenical Department
Dedicating a week of prayer for christian unity might suggest that Christ's disciples only seek unity during this time of the year. However, they pray for unity daily throughout the year, with a common belief in “One, holy, catholic and apostolic Church”. What distinguishes these eight days is that Christians from different Churches and communities pray together, reflecting on one subject, following one service, and gathered locally in one place. Thus appears the unity in its splendor, reflecting a true christian prayer. This week, "prayer for unity" becomes "unity for prayer", a complimentary concept.
The first reminds us that unity is above all a divine gift, which we seek by prayer so it is realized and accomplished according to God’s will. Jesus Christ Himself prayed so that His disciples may be one, in the image of His unity with God the Father. But can we pray if we are not one? Didn’t the Lord ask us to forgive before standing to pray (Mark 11:25) and command us to reconcile before bringing our gifts to the altar (Matthew 5:23-24)?
On top of the repeated teachings of our Lord, and believing in the unity of the Church built according to God’s plan, we see in the Magi, the subject of our common prayer for this year, a practical answer to these questions. It is true that it was the celestial light that led the Magi to the divine child to worship Him. Yet they were able to see the true star because they were together, otherwise, each of them alone would have found and followed his own star. Moreover, they walked the path together until they reached their destination, otherwise each of them alone wouldn’t have been able to bear the hardships of the journey and overcome the obstacles putted up by the tyrants at that time. In the end, their journey led them to enter the house together. “They saw the child with his mother Mary. They bowed down and worshiped him.” (Matthew 2:11).
Worshiping the real king has been their desire for a long time. It came true after they found the star and decided together to walk together in its direction. Indeed, their unanimity in their view of the heavenly sign and their unity in the journey contributed to their presence before God to worship and pray. On the other hand, their gathering in the same house and their prostration together to Christ consolidated the communion between them, and made of their gifts, whether precious or humble, treasures worthy of God. This unity, regenerated by the gathering around the one Lord, accompanied them on their way back to their different countries, as the Gospel says, they followed the path God had revealed to them.
With our ongoing prayers for unity, we associate ourselves this week, each with our different traditions, with those wise Magi who shared the same vision and path, and united to then find God who was lighting their way from afar, they prostrated before him and were overjoyed. (Matthew 2:10)
We, in the Theological and Ecumenical Department of the Middle East Council of Churches, are overjoyed to have contributed this year, not only in publishing the Arabic version of the week of prayer for christian unity, but rather by preparing the material which, after the joint approval of the World Council of Churches and the Holy See, it would become, for at least a week, a prayer repeated by every mouth and pronounced by every tongue, and a contemplation in the hearts of our Christian brothers and sisters scattered around the world. We are thankful for our colleagues who accomplished this ecclesial service.
Let us remember that unity for prayer, especially if in one place, is the most glorious manifestation of the one Church of Christ. Rather, it is a prior realization of its ultimate goal: joining the heavenly, celestial chants when every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, everything in the universe, cry out: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever.” (Revelation 5:13)