Unity among Christians Called For!

 

Unity among Christians Called For! 

Fr Dr M. D. Thomas

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The month of January, to be precise, the week between 18 and 25, is known in the Christian community, world over, as ‘Christian Unity Week’. This is also known as ‘Unity Octave’ or ‘Week of Prayer for Christian Unity’. This period is specially scheduled for promoting unity among Christian communities of the world, major and minor, on various levels.   

Prayer sessions, interactions, discussions, fellowship meals and collaborative ways of reaching out to the least and the lost are some of the major ways of celebrating this week. These programmes are intended to involve persons from all Christian communities. Such events are supposed to be organized on the local, regional, national, continental and international levels, as well.

This noble tradition of promoting unity derives from the Second World Catholic Council of Vatican in the 60s of the 20th century, which struck a historic ‘note of unity’, both among the Christian communities and among all religious and social communities of the world. ‘Nostra Aetate’, meaning ‘In our time’, is the name of the significant document that motivated this fundamental awakening for ‘a new way of being Christian’.

Accordingly, discriminating human beings in the name of ethnic origin, gender, language, caste, class, colour, creed, rite, tradition, ideology, community, culture, nationality, social customs, food habits, dress patterns, and the like, is a sheer violation of the Christian faith in God, the loving Father of all human beings and the entire creation. For that reason, sustaining fraternal relations leading to unity is the right way of being a Christian and staying united with all Christian communities, along with humans of all religious and social affiliations, is and has to be the real outcome of the radical realization mentioned above.

In view of translating the above vision into a mission, the Catholic Church instituted in course of time Pontifical Council for Christian Unity at the international level, along with offices of Christian unity at the continental, national, state and diocesan levels. Most of the Christian communities in the world established units for Christian unity on different levels, too, like World Council of Churches, National Council of Churches in India and Evangelical Fellowship of India.

Christian unity is grounded in sharing, one to another, three core realities of life -- the human and spiritual ‘values’ of Jesus the great Teacher and Master, the Bible as the sacred scripture of ‘good news’ and the ‘faith’ in being part of the large family of God the Father on earth. The ‘filial experience’ of God coupled with the ‘fraternal expression’ of being a sister or brother to every human being on earth is the pathway to Christian unity. And, Christian unity, in its turn, necessarily leads, and has to lead, to unity among all religious and social communities on earth, as well.

In addition, Jesus is like a tree and all Christian communities are like the branches of that tree, just like the body having different parts perfectly blended together. Abiding by the tree and all its branches is the only way to draw the sap of life from the tree and to flourish as branches, in the spirit of sharing the divine and human life among them from the same source. ‘Love’ is the characteristic mark of being a Christian and without loving Christians of all communities, along with all other communities, no Christian can claim to love Jesus and God the Father, not at all.

This is exactly what John, a significant writer of the story of Jesus in the Bible, categorically affirmed, “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen”.

Furthermore, “Do to the other what you would have him or her do to you” is the universal golden rule set on top by Jesus Christ, the Messiah. Moreover, ‘When you have loved other Christians, other believers and other human beings, you have already loved Jesus and God the Father’, and definitely not otherwise. This is the golden sum and substance of a faith or life that is worth the name on this planet.

Pope John Paul II illustrated the above golden rule on dialogical terms when he stated, as well, “By dialogue we open ourselves to one another, for as we open ourselves to one another, we open ourselves to God”. Yet again, Pope Francis, the most brilliant papal leader of the modern times, through his latest encyclical ‘Fratelli Tutti’, has summarized Christian faith, and all faiths for that matter, to ‘fraternity and social friendship’ with every person.

But, as a matter of fact, we know too well that there are lots of private considerations in all Christian communities and units, which create distance among them and even make them collide with each other. Most of those considerations are in terms of perceptions, interpretations, organizational dynamics, administration and resource management. The way of conceiving and following Jesus seems to be cut to the size of the disciples, so as to suit their interests in the respective contexts. Such a phenomenon cannot be totally ruled out in the earthly sojourn of the humans, considering the limits of the created world.

But, what is required is believers in Christ have to ensure that they are tuned to the essentials of what Jesus, Bible and faith are all about. Most of the details are of secondary importance and one has to learn not to be enslaved to them, to the point of being disconnected with other Christian believers. Being in disharmony with other believers in Christ, in other gods and goddesses too, is not only a counter witness to Jesus, but it defeats the merit of one’s faith, as well.            

From this perspective, it is not difficult to realize that Christian believers of all communities in India and across the globe have a razor-sharp question right in front of them, ‘Oh! Christians, will you rise above trivial private concerns and remain United?’ Maintaining brotherly, sisterly and friendly relations and fellowship with all Christian communities, along with people of all faiths, ideologies and cultures, in our country and in the entire world, is the right response to the call for unity.

A ‘refresh’, and even make a ‘restart’, to that effect, is called for. One’s individual and collective faith has to be the vibrant source of motivation for contributing one’s mite towards unity among all believers, Christian or other. Staying united with believers of the entire Christian community, leading to harmony with the entire lot of human beings, in view of making our country and the world society more harmonious than what they are today is the way of being a believer or disciple Jesus would be proud of.  

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The author is Director, Institute of Harmony and Peace Studies, New Delhi, and has been committed to interfaith relations, national integration and social harmony, for the past over 40 years. He contributes to the above cause through lectures, articles, video messages, conferences, social interactions, views at TV channels, and the like.

He could be viewed, listened to and contacted at the following portals – websites ‘www.mdthomas.in’ (p), ‘https://mdthomas.academia.edu’ (p), ‘https://drmdthomas.blogspot.com’ (p) and ‘www.ihpsindia.org’ (o); social media ‘https://www.youtube.com/InstituteofHarmonyandPeaceStudies’ (o), ‘https://twitter.com/mdthomas53’(p), ‘https://www.facebook.com/mdthomas53’ (p); email ‘mdthomas53@gmail.com’  (p) and telephone 9810535378 (p).   

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