Llegando a la basilica... Reaching the basilica.. Viele strömen in die Basilika
Momentos antes de la hora santa Moments before the Vespers Kurz vor der Vesper
Cristianos unidos rumbo a sus lugares de fe y testimonio United Christians leaving for their places of faith Vereinte Christen auf dem Weg heim an den Ort ihres Glaubenszeugnisses
Padre nuestro... la oración de unidad cristiana Our Father... the prayer of Christian unity Vater unser… das Gebet der Einheit
Claustro Cloisture Kreuzgang Fotos: Donnelly © 2006

ROME, Simon Donnelly. "Where two are three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst" was the theme of this year’s week of Christian unity. And so two or three or more thousand Christians gathered on Wednesday evening, 25 January 2006, the evening on the feastday of the conversion of the greatest missionary, Paul the Apostle. We were there to sing and pray the Evening Prayer (Vespers) of the day, together, giving testimony to the unity that is possible, that we seek, and that with God’s grace we will return to in time.

This was the end of the week of Christian unity, celebrated in Rome in its present form since 1968, each year with a different theme. It had been a week of many moments of Catholics and other Christians deeply seeking renewed unity. In my own seminary community, long and delicate discussions had been had by our rector with the five Orthodox priests and seminarians living in our house (the living and studying together is already a significant, even if limited, gesture of mutual Christian faith). We must find a way to share the liturgy—the ritual expression of our faith—said our Rector! Some of our Orthodox brothers had pointed out that the Greek Orthodox vespers we Catholic seminarians and priests intended to participate in are not a simple matter of each reading a prayer in a different language; rather, the Greek Vespers are part of an ancient tradition, and they are celebrated entirely in liturgical Greek, not lending themselves to simple adaptation. Then again, from the Catholic side, we wanted to be more than just spectators. In the end we made this an extended ‘triduum’ of events during the week of unity: we would attend Greek Orthodox first Vespers on Saturday night; the Orthodox students and fathers would be present at our Sunday evening second Vespers; and to top off the shared liturgies, all of us would be present at and take part in the Vespers at St Paul’s Basilica, invited there by the Bishop of Rome, Benedict XVI.

The hard road of ecumenism

Let no one say that ecumenism is not very hard work! It involves sweat and tears and frustration and anger and a little humiliation. It means acknowledging all the scandals of our Christian past, both for Catholics and non-Catholics. We are still far from full unity, and yet the impetus of Benedict in continuing and extending the work towards full Catholic/Orthodox unity is palpable in Rome. The new Holy Father misses no opportunity to remind us of this, as he did on Wednesday night: in Christ’s own words in John’s Gospel, taken up by the eponymous encyclical of our beloved John Paul: Ut unum sint — that all may be one!

Well before the starting hour, we Christian pilgrims were pouring out of the San Paolo subway station; others walked there, others came by bicycle, still others by bus. As the cold winter evening was falling, we streamed into the front doors of the other great apostolic basilica of Rome: St Paul’s Outside the Walls. This massive church built by Constantine survived 1400 years of Roman successes and failures, only to burn down nearly completely on July 15, 1823 (after a negligent workman didn’t extinguish his wooden torch-flare before going home!). Starting in 1832, the rebuilt St Pauls’ is a towering treasure of beauty at the heart of the city of the two greatest Apostles.

Walking around the back, we passed Swiss guards (it’s hard to miss them with all that red ‘hair’ on top of their helmets!); they were already at their posts outside the rear entrance to the sacristy, preparing for Benedict’s arrival. Coming around the front of the Basilica, we walk through the very unusual double row of 46 white granite pillars (the quadriportico) surrounding the entrance courtyard garden, and we dwarfed by the statue of St Paul in the middle of the coutyard, to be surprised and delighted by the out-of-place palm trees, and to be awestruck by the facade of the Basilica, depicting the two mystical cities—Bethlehem and Jerusalem—with the four Gospel streams flowing from the rock, on top of which the Lamb of God lies. Above are the four great Jewish prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. topped off by the apostles Peter and Paul, and the Blessing Christ at the top of the front facade. Above Christ on the very top of the roof is a small cross with the words ‘Spes Unica’ carved underneath (‘the only hope’); and swirling about the cross this afternoon was a single bird, almost like the presence of the Holy Spirit.

We could pray the Office of the Day quietly as we waited, including the extraordinary paean of St Paul in the sermon of St John Chrysostom: Paul sought humiliation, suffering, pain. He regarded these as nothing in comparison with the treasure of the friendship of Jesus Christ. The same John Chrysostom has played a recent role in ecumenism: it was his relics—along with that of Gregory Nazianzen—that were given back by John Paul II to the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew (27 November 2004).

‘This is not about me; it’s about Jesus’

We could also look through our booklet for today’s liturgy, which—pulling no punches—lists the kind of scandalous divisions that have rent (although not destroyed) the fabric of the faith, without apportioning any blame. They include the 11th century Great Schism between west and east, and the later Protestant Reform that began in the 16th century and continues today.

At last, the successor to the apostle Peter came walking in, simply and quietly, without fuss. This was no emperor swaggering in to his palace, but the servant of the fisherman, come to a temple reserved for praising God over more than one and a half millennia, to pray with the faithful sheep of the one Good Shepherd. But I was overwhelmed as usual by shouting clapping waving cheering Italians and others, including many religious sisters standing on chairs, some brandishing digital cameras, all to get a glimpse of Benedict our Pope! (I wasn’t too worried, because if you missed Benedict in person, his portrait is already up on the side of the Church, along with that of every Pope in the history of the faith, for which St Paul’s Basilica is justly famous).

But the Holy Father is quite clear in his body language and his liturgical gestures: ‘This is not about me; it’s about Jesus’. Benedict points to Christ; that seems his only role.

Then, without fuss, we began the three psalms of the Universal Church’s evening prayer—prayed by Catholic and non-Catholic leaders in turn—then the reading, and a short homily. Benedict said: "We are aware that at the base of the ecumenical commitment is conversion of the heart, as the second Vatican Council clearly confirms: ‘There is no true ecumenism without interior conversion; thus the desire for unity is born and matures from the renewal of the mind, from the denial of self and from the completely free pouring out of love [charity]’. God is love. On this solid rock rests the entire faith of the Church".

A melody that is nearly as old as the Church itself

This allows the pope to touch on his encyclical which has just come out this morning. Benedict’s beautiful, rolling, poetic encyclical overflows clearly with his own experience of God’s love: Deus Caritas Est. It seems to me vintage Ratzinger: refined, human, balanced, nuanced, passionate.

We stand again to sing the Magnificat that gives us the very words of Mary our Mother and Queen, thanking and praising God the Father, leading us back to him every night.

Then the Lord’s own prayer, that Christians share daily across the world, sung to a melody that is nearly as old as the Church herself. We sing the Pater Noster in Latin, the oldest language of the western liturgy. And we sang it in its fullest form, including ‘Thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory’, a significant gesture.

Finally, Benedict blesses us, as all the Bishops of Christianity have blessed their flocks since Peter and Paul blessed the first Christians in Rome, in this same city, in the days and nights of the mid-1st century, and we go out into the night, back into our different worlds within the same city, praying that our paths are just a little closer to the one path that we shared for the first half of our history, and to which we must return.

As Paul was converted may we be converted every day. May our hearts not grow cold, but may we love each other more daily, even in our state of separation and fragmentation. May we all be one, Lord, as you and the Father are one. If it was possible in November 2004 at the moment of the handing of relics from Pope John Paul to Patriarch Bartholomew, and if it has been possible for an hour in St Paul’s tonight, then it will be possible in a permanent way one day. We need our two lungs to breathe properly. St Paul, pray for us. Holy John Paul II, pray for us.