Alive and idle

After all, the bridge is still there. And now more than ever, I feel that Christians from both sides do desire to cross the bridge to the other side.

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is an opportune time to live up to the desire of Jesus: that all may be one. Despite our differences, we can still be united as children of the One God. This week, we made the prayer of the Lord our own. We realized that, indeed, the divisions and tensions that the world witnesses from us Christians do not reflect our being – our being Christians. We scandalize the world because we profess that we are children of God, that we believe in Jesus, and yet we separate ourselves from one another, sometimes even throw stones on one another. Now, the world can see who we truly are.

Openness and willingness to change. These broke down the walls that wrapped us up in isolation from one another for so long. With openness, we saw that the God of our brethren is the same God we adore and love. We were willing to change our distorted perception that the Holy Spirit is only working in our Church. More importantly, we learned to accept that we do not compose the Church of Jesus individually, but together, we are that Church.

“How good it is to see when brothers dwell as one!” the world may exclaim as it witnesses the oneness that we are, as we pray together to God as his children for the needs of the world. We no longer scandalize the world – that much.

There are still stepping stones ahead before we reach the end. We are challenged to keep on moving, to push ourselves even farther.

As a Catholic participating in the religious gathering of another sect, I realized more and more the beauty of our liturgical celebrations. Appreciating the liturgy of the other sect, I got to think that our liturgy is far more meaningfully ordered. Somewhere in their liturgy, I felt uneasy because, in a very limited, human sense, the Holy Spirit seemed idle. He seems to be more alive in the Catholic Church. Of course, this is not to insult the Holy Spirit working in them.

Probably, these ideas of being alive and being idle can also be instructive of the whole work of ecumenism. We cannot let our desire for Christian unity remain idle but alive. Only then can the end be in sight. (January, 2001)