Ecumenical Dialogue

Some personal reflections on Ecumenical dialogue at Minster Abbey

As we came to the close of our time together, I found myself reflecting on the graces and challenges of this East-West Meeting and of our previous encounters with our Eastern brethren. On the last evening, we stood together at prayer in the candlelit church of St Silouan the Athonite in the Orthodox monastery of St John the Baptist in Essex. The clear sounding and gently paced recitation of the Jesus Prayer before the iconostasis filled me once more with a profound desire for the restoration of unity among all Christians. A foretaste of breathing with both lungs or perhaps the reality of this in prayer, which transcends and defies division.

My first stay in the monastery of St John the Baptist was in May 1996; it was a preparation for our first Monastic East-West encounter later that year. I discovered that Fr Sophrony, disciple of St Silouan and founder of the monastery, died on the Feast of St Benedict, 1992. I spent many hours in prayer at his tomb.

One of Fr Sophrony's most famous aphorisms is, 'Keep thy mind in Hell and despair not.' This relates to his optimistic hope for the salvation of all. I have been thinking about our divisions as a kind of hell about which we must not despair. There is always hope.
For our first meeting of monks and nuns from East and West, we looked at the writings of St. Basil, led by Dom Augustine Holmes of Pluscarden Abbey. At that time I had little knowledge of the pre-Chalcedonian Oriental Churches, even though we had made friends with a local Coptic community. In 2000 we were enlightened by Dr Sebastian Brock and introduced to the remarkable work began by Pro Oriente and the dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Syriac Tradition. This year our focus seemed to be turned, quite unexpectedly, to this development and the awareness of the Eucharistic Agreement made between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Catholic Chaldean Church in 2001. We heard Archbishop Yohanna speak of the commitment between our Churches on every level. Our Syrian Oriental brethren in this country sadly have not yet found a welcome from the Catholic Church in England except, we are told, in our meetings here.

It seems to me that our Holy Father has the key when he realises that in order to heal the broken tree of our Church, we need first to repair the damaged roots. This is precisely what is happening now. The Ecumenical Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon are being revisited and we are discovering, after so many centuries, that we are one in faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God and the Son of Man, even with those we have historically dismissed as Nestorian heretics. This is very encouraging news, but how many of us are ready to receive it? Is it not significant that these gigantic steps are coming from the places closest to the origins of Christianity where people are suffering so much for their faith and even perhaps because of that suffering? Ut Unum Sint.

The Holy Father has already presented to us his suggestions regarding the future course for 'the dialogue of charity' in his Apostolic Letter Orientale Lumen. Some of the Holy Father's suggestions are radical and deeply challenging. They include inter-parish activities such as twinning and joint pilgrimages; the study of the Eastern Church's liturgy in seminaries and theological faculties; welcoming Eastern Church professors and students to universities and academic institutions; ecumenical cooperation between Latin and Eastern ordinaries, both Catholic and Orthodox; the foundation of Eastern Catholic monasteries. The Holy Father informs us that these are sound recommendations that he intends to insist on. We share the hopes of the Holy Father and pray that the challenges he has placed before us will find a generous response from all members of the Catholic Church in our own land.

Sr. Benedict Gaughan OSB

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