Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
(A-cycle)  January 20, 2008

Many years ago when I was just ordained, I was filled with zeal for making converts. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen had received many prominent figures, such as author Claire Booth Luce and violinist Fritz Kreisler into the Church. Under his inspiration newly ordained priests like myself could not help but make millions of converts. As I drove by Protestant churches, I thought, your days are numbered. In case you haven’t noticed, they’re still around. Many of their parishioners, I learned, were perfectly happy with the way they practiced their Christian faith. A few years ago, I attended an ecumenical gathering at which Bishop Smith, the Episcopal bishop of Connecticut, spoke. He said when he was ordained, he thought through his efforts and the work of young priests like himself, everybody would become Episcopalian. Obviously, we both had a lot to learn.

 

At the Second Vatican Council, just a few years after my ordination, the Catholic Church formally stated that the great variety of Christian churches was not all a bad thing. We could admire, for instance, the liturgy of the Orthodox,  Episcopalian and Lutheran churches, the pacifism of the Quakers, the social justice efforts of the Congregationalists and the enthusiasm of the Methodists. While we believe the fullness of Christ’s revelation subsists in the Catholic Church, other churches have become vehicles of true holiness for their members.

 

Still, unity remains a goal. Jesus, after all, in the Gospel of John, prays to His Father for His followers “that they may be one as we are one that the world may know that you have sent me, that they may be perfected in unity that the world may know that you have loved them, even as you have loved me.” The unity of His followers would be so awesome that the world would know it could only be produced by God. We are far short of that goal, but we must never abandon it.

 

Divided Christianity, when it is warring Christianity, turns people away from Christ. Hearing members of different Christian denominations belittling one another makes listeners rightly ask” This is the religion of love? Just from a practical point of view, our divisions handicap us. Think of needless reduplication of efforts and trying to convert one another when so much of the world is unchurched, so desperately in need of a Savior.

 

A hundred years ago, a Franciscan friar, Father Paul of the Graymore monastery in Garrison New York started the week of Prayer for Christian Unity. We are in the middle of that now. Father Paul was raised Episcopalian and became a Catholic, but he never forgot the people he left behind. This week of prayer was eventually adopted by the Protestant-based World Council of Churches, which recognized that we must never stop praying for unity.

 

The conversion that is really needed is conversion to Christ by all of us. The closer we get to him, the closer we get to each other. We should pray ‘make us one’. What would a united Christianity look like? We better leave that to the Spirit. Pope John Paul II was a model for us here. He wrote to Christians of other denominations: I recognize that one of the great obstacles to unity is the Bishop of Rome. Write and tell me how he can be less of an obstacle. This humble plea shows us the attitude needed on all sides to make Christ’s vision of a united church a reality.