June 16, 2019 – Fairfax, VA
“Today is Sunday, and I was just thinking how grateful I am to be a Christian, under the commandment to keep today holy by my restful attention to the most important things in life”
Bishop John Michael
Today is Sunday, June 16. Since Friday, when the Spring Plenary Assembly of the USCCB ended in Baltimore, I have been in Fairfax, VA, at the home of my friend, Jack Figel. You know Jack: he has been the editor of Unirea/Canton for a number of years. Tomorrow begins the 23rd annual Orientale Lumen (Light of the East) Conference, which Jack organizes and which I participate in as the Catholic co-sponsor, together with my Orthodox counterpart, Metropolitan Kallistos [Ware] of Diokleia, of the Society of St. John Chrysostom in the US.
Our friendship goes back those 23 years, to the time I attended the very first Orientale Lumen Conference. This conference, named after Pope St. John Paul II’s apostolic letter of the same name (May 2, 1995), has been a very effective, though mostly “under the radar” ecumenical effort to bring Catholics, both Roman and Eastern, together with Orthodox. The vast majority of participants are lay people, but the gathering always consists of a nice mix of Eastern and Roman Catholic and Orthodox laity, clergy, theologians, and bishops.
I mention this just to give you some background on what I will be doing—and perhaps reporting on—in the week ahead. It is not my intention to write about the Conference itself and its history. Suffice it to say that it has been something I have been deeply involved in for two decades. And it has been one of the most rewarding and enriching experiences of my life.
But the reward isn’t coming from the great progress that the Orthodox and Catholic churches have made in that time. Indeed, the relationship between the churches looks about as bad now as it ever has in my lifetime. There are many indications that this is so, most recently in the fact that it was not possible for Pope Francis and Patriarch Daniel of Bucharest to pray a simple “Our Father” together in the Orthodox Cathedral of the People’s Salvation (Catedrala Mântuirii Neamului) in Bucharest during the Holy Father’s recent visit.
This was a big disappointment to me, even if it was completely predictable. It was a signal that things are going backwards, not forwards, in ecumenism, an effort at Christian unity that some Catholics and many Orthodox consider to be simply heresy.
Disappointed as I am, I have not given up hope. I am looking forward to the Orientale Lumen conference this week, although it will have the fewest participants ever and perhaps be the last such conference ever. I will be getting back into the hard work of getting along, which is always a worthwhile endeavor, even when the result seems to be failure. After all, it cost Jesus his life in order to inaugurate a kingdom of peace that, two millennia later, seems as distant a possibility as it was in His own lifetime.
Today is Sunday, and I was just thinking how grateful I am to be a Christian, under the commandment to keep today holy by my restful attention to the most important things in life, absent the noise and hustle of the workaday world. As I enjoy today’s rest, I recall that all of my problems and all the things I have to do will still be there, waiting for me, tomorrow. Today’s rest is what will give me the strength and energy to tackle them all anew.
Likewise failure. When things do not work out, whether at the level of global ecumenical relationships or at the intimate level of our personal relationships, I am reminded that what looks like failure is just a needed, refreshing pause in the hard work that any relationship involves. God is in charge, and God always wins in the end, even when it appears that God is losing. When we fail at our relationships, it simply means we have to stop, take a deep breath, and rest comfortably in God’s presence, so that we can take on the struggle with renewed energy tomorrow.
It was Christ’s prayer “that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me” (John 17:21). Clearly that has not happened yet, and sometimes I am tempted to think that Christ’s prayer will not be answered. But I haven’t given up yet, nor will I. I will instead take advantage of the pause to gather strength for the struggle ahead.