VATICAN - At the general audience Pope Benedict XVI recalls “what has vivified and continues to vivify the path towards full communion among all Christians, is first of all prayer”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “Christians of different Churches and ecclesial Communities for the past few days have been united in a choral prayer to ask the Lord Jesus to restore full unity among all his disciples … when they ask for the grace of unity Christians join in Christ's own prayer and commit themselves to work actively so that the whole of humanity may welcome and accept Him as the One Shepherd and Lord, and experience the joy of His love”. With these words the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI commenced his catechesis focused on the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity at the Wednesday general audience on 23 January.
As the Pope recalled, a hundred years ago in 1908, “an American Anglican, who later entered into communion with the Catholic Church, the founder of Society of the Atonement (the Community of brothers and sisters of the Atonement), Rev Paul Wattson, with another American Anglican, Rev Spencer Jones, launched the prophetic idea of an octave of prayer for unity among Christians. The idea was welcomed by the Archbishop of New York and by the Papal Nuncio”. A call to pray for unity was extended in 1916, to the whole Catholic Church thanks to Pope Benedict XV. “With the prophetic wind of the Second Vatican Council- the Holy Father continued - the urgency of unity was felt even more keenly. After the Council the patient search for full communion among all Christians continued its path, an ecumenical journey which year after year found precisely in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, one of its most qualifying and profitable moments”. Significant also the dates chosen: on the calendar at the time of the First Week of Prayer January 18 was the Feast of the Chair of Peter and January 25, as in our day, was the feast of the Conversion of St Paul. The Pope urged Christians to give thanks to God “for these hundred years of common prayer and efforts among many disciples of Christ”, for the person who had the idea and for all those who promoted and enriched the initiative.
In his address Pope Benedict XVI pointed out that Vatican II gave special attention to the theme of Christian unity, “especially with the Decree on ecumenism Unitatis redintegratio, which emphasises, among other things, the role and importance of prayer for unity … Thanks to this spiritual ecumenism - holiness of life, conversion of heart, private and public prayer -, this shared quest for unity has registered in recent decades considerable development diversified in numerous initiatives … Secondly, the Council emphasised shared prayer, prayer lifted up to the one heavenly Father by Catholics and other Christians together… in common prayers Christians stand together before the Lord and, realising the contradictions generated by division, they manifest a desire to obey His will, confidently having recourse to his almighty assistance … Therefore common prayer is not a voluntaristic or purely sociological action, instead it is the expression of the faith which unites all Christ's disciples … It is awareness of our human limits which drives us to put ourselves confidently into the Lord's hands”.
The Holy Father went on to say “the world suffers because of the absence of God, the inaccessibility of God, and it desires to know the face of God. But how could, indeed how can men and women of today know this face of God, in the face of Jesus Christ, if we Christians are divided, if one teaches against the other, if one is against the other? Only in unity can we truly show this world - in such need- the face of God, the face of Christ. It is obvious that not with our strategies, dialogue or everything else we do- which is nonetheless necessary - can we obtain this unity. What we can obtain is our willingness and capacity to welcome this unity when the Lord gives it to us. This is the meaning of prayer: to open our hearts, to create within us this willingness to prepare the way for Christ”.
Pope Benedict XVI concluded urging Christians to "pray without ceasing", as St Paul said to the early Christians in Thessalonica: “Let us too welcome this pressing call of the Apostle, to thank God for progress made in the ecumenical movement and to invoke full unity”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 24/1/2008; righe 49, parole 720)