Vatican City, 28 June 2014 (VIS) –
The Solemnity of the Holy Patrons of the Church of Rome, the Apostles
Peter and Paul, again provided Pope Francis the opportunity to meet
with a delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople,
which always visits Rome on this date. In exchange, a delegation from
the Vatican visits Instanbul, Turkey, every 30 November, St. Andrew's
Day.
On this occasion the delegation was
headed by the metropolitan of Pergamo, Ioannis (Zizioulas),
co-president of the international mixed Commission for theological
dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, who was
accompanied by Archbishop Job de Telmissos and the patriarchal
archdeacon John Chryssavgis.
The Holy Father recalled with great
affection his “beloved brother” Bartholomaios, with whom he
shared his recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land, during which they were
able to repeat the historical embrace between their predecessors,
Athenagoras I and Paul VI, which took place fifty years ago in the
holy city of Jerusalem. “That prophetic gesture gave a decisive
impulse to a journey which, thank God, has never ceased”, remarked
Pope Francis. “I consider it a special gift from the Lord that we
were able to venerate the holy places together and to pray at each
other’s side at the place of Christ’s burial, where we can
actually touch the foundation of our hope”. The joy of their common
prayer was then renewed during the recent meeting in the Vatican
Gardens where they joined in prayer, together with the Presidents of
Israel and Palestine, to invoke the gift of peace in the Holy Land”.
“The Lord granted us these occasions
of fraternal encounter, in which we were able to express the love
uniting us in Christ, and to renew our mutual desire to walk together
along the path to full unity”, continued the Holy Father. “We
know very well that this unity is a gift of God, a gift that even now
the Almighty grants us the grace to attain whenever, by the power of
the Holy Spirit, we choose to look at one another with the eyes of
faith and to see ourselves as we truly are in God’s plan, according
to the designs of his eternal will, and not what we have become as a
result of the historical consequences of our sins. If all of us can
learn, prompted by the Spirit, to look at one another in God, our
path will be even straighter and our cooperation all the more easy in
the many areas of daily life which already happily unite us”.
This theological vision “is nourished
by faith, hope and love; it gives rise to an authentic theological
reflection which is truly 'scientia Dei', a participation in that
vision which God has of himself and of us. It is a reflection which
can only bring us closer to one another on the path of unity, despite
our differing starting points. I hope and I pray, then, that the work
of the Joint International Commission can be a sign of this profound
understanding, this theology 'on its knees'. In this way, the
Commission’s reflections on the concepts of primacy and synodality,
communion in the universal Church and the ministry of the Bishop of
Rome will not be an academic exercise or a mere debate about
irreconcilable positions. All of us need, with courage and
confidence, to be open to the working of the Holy Spirit. We need to
let ourselves be caught up in Christ’s loving gaze upon the Church,
his Bride, in our journey of spiritual ecumenism. It is a journey
upheld by the martyrdom of so many of our brothers and sisters who,
by their witness to Jesus Christ the Lord, have brought about an
ecumenism of blood”, concluded the Pope.
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