Homily for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
The annual Week of Prayer for the Unity of all Christians begins on Thursday next. The practice of holding this special week of prayer annually began thirty years ago when Pope John announced his decision to call the Second Vatican Council. That assembly was immensely important for a number of reasons and it made many, many far-reaching decisions that have changed forever the face of the Catholic Church. But, when the dust eventually settles, as eventually it must, one factor of importance will stand head and shoulders above all others; and it is as follows: for the first time since the 16th century Reformation, the Catholic Church acknowledged that it had no monopoly on God or on the truth. It acknowledged the sincerity and validity of other roads to God. It acknowledged that the Protestant Church, by constantly stressing the importance of Scripture, did all Churches a service. The Catholic Church confessed its own sin by acknowledging that it had indeed neglected the Bible through the ages. The Protestant Churches, for their part, confessed that they had been negligent and sinful by failing to acknowledge the power of the sacraments in the life of the Christian.
This new-found mutual respect was a far cry from what had gone before. Up to this point, what passed for fraternal dialogue was nothing other than an unhealthy exchange of insults. Until then, the only thing that the Catholic and the Protestant traditions held in common was a profound disrespect for each other. Somehow, in the late 1960s and early 1970s the churches came of age, officially at any rate. They began to recognise and acknowledge the valid insights of rival creeds. Or, as St. Paul puts it in his letter to the Corinthians: "There is a variety of gifts but always the same spirit; working in all sorts of different ways in different peoples, it is the same Lord who is working in all of them." Respect has replaced suspicion. Or at least that is the theory.
The scandal of Christian division has been nowhere more apparent or more poisonous than in our own country. Up to relatively recent times, we had the unique but dubious distinction of being the only country in the Western Europe that still produced people who kill in the name of religion. Both religions, Catholicism and Protestantism, are thereby reduced to tribal flags of convenience.
While this is a time of great hope, much work and healing remains to be done. But this hope is not without foundation. Both the Catholic and the Protestant churches have come a very long way in a relatively short time. If the catholic and protestant peoples in our country remain divided today, it is despite the best efforts of our churches, not because of our churches. It is fashionable today to criticise our Church leaders. They are often portrayed as out of touch, weak, intellectually undistinguished. However, we should remember that, over the last twenty-five years, the leaders of our mainline churches have been prophetic voices, often crying in a political wilderness. The leaders of both main Churches in particular kept the Christian precept of forgiveness to the fore. On particularly dark days, when the whole country looked as if it might slide into civil war, the church leaders were often the only voices of reason to be heard.
Our churches have become instruments of unity rather than agents of division. Yet we must not be complacent. The division of the Christian churches is still a reality in our country and a scandal to the world. But this year the week of Christian Unity is being celebrated in an atmosphere of optimism and hope. In the course of this week let us thank God for this sign of his presence in our world.