In an effort to find some striking and impressive bit of trivia to begin today’s post with, I was side-tracked by a speech given by the Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Bartholomew I, and while I didn’t end up with the sought-for piece of trivia, it did point to what I thought was an interesting aspect of this celebration – that it is a chance to forward the ecumenical movement between the Eastern and Western Churches.

I often wondered during my Religious History class what it would take to bring East and West together once again.  I thought of the sort of concessions it might involve on both sides – and whether the faithful on both sides would be willing to change if change was necessary, and what great change of heart would need to happen on both sides on such a broad scale.  Considerable experience of living in close quarters with very close siblings was always cause to reflect on how ridiculous it was that the people closest to a person are the ones who it’s easiest to get angry at, and the hardest to make concessions to.  The fiercest wars, it’s said, are most often civil wars, and the most bitter disagreements are often about the pettiest things between close friends.  But reunion and reconciliation was never sweeter than when between siblings.  Relations were terribly bitter at the time of the Schism – has enough time passed that we can look forward to a growing union between East and West once again?

The following quote from John Paul II’s encyclical Ut Unum Sint of 25 May 1995 makes a good point:

Every renewal of the Church is essentially grounded in an increase of fidelity to her own calling. Undoubtedly this is the basis of the movement toward unity … There can be no ecumenism worthy of the name without a change of heart. For it is from renewal of the inner life of our minds, from self-denial and an unstinted love that desires of unity take their rise and develop in a mature way. We should therefore pray to the Holy Spirit for the grace to be genuinely self-denying, humble. gentle in the service of others, and to have an attitude of brotherly generosity towards them. … The words of St. John hold good about sins against unity: “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us”. So we humbly beg pardon of God and of our separated brethren, just as we forgive them that trespass against us.

Considering our common roots, lets ask these two great saints we hold in common with the Eastern Orthodox Church, Sts Peter and Paul, to continue to pray for us and for the smoothing of the way to union between East and West once again.