Every January there is a Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  This year the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity have declared the theme for that week to be “Has Christ Been Divided?,” and they have proposed a biblical text for meditation and reflection, 1 Corinthians 1:1-17, wherein Saint Paul tells us that the Christians at Corinth formed cliques and preened themselves over their spiritual pedigrees:  “I am of Paul, I am of Cephas, I am of Apollos.”  In effect Saint Paul told them to get over it and stop having such silly divisions.

This annual occasion to think and pray about Christian unity has brought to mind an interesting experience when some time ago I attended an annual festival at a Greek Orthodox church.  It was a merry time, an occasion to enjoy homemade baklava and Greek coffee and watch zestful dancing that would make Zorba proud.  Also, there were numerous icons for sale, and I browsed amongst them.

A stocky, vigorous old gentleman in a Greek fisherman’s cap came up to me and offered to interpret the Greek inscription on each icon.  I thanked him and said that I could read some Greek.  Amazed, he asked, “How, are you Greek?”  No, I had studied Greek.  “Why?” he asked.  Before becoming a monk, I had studied classics.  “A monk?”  And so his conversation (more of a monologue, really) turned to his assessment of Catholic monks and Orthodox monks.

It was one of the rare times I was in mufti.  Usually when out and about I wear a collar, whereas at the monastery I am always in my habit.  However, neither my attire nor my being clean-shaven drew his attention.  Rather, he wanted to notice the bigger picture, the fact that, even though “way back when” Rome had broken away from the Greek church of Saint Paul and the other Apostles and had decided to make the sign of the Cross backwards and do everything in Latin, hey, both East and West, there were still monks.

Furthermore, he observed that we were now at a point where a Roman monk could come to a Greek church festival.  This was good, he said, a step towards reunion.  “And you know,” he said, grabbing my shoulder, “we could have unity any time!  The people, ordinary people, Catholic, Orthodox, they would have it any time, because, let’s face it, it’s the same God, right?  The same Christ, the same Gospel, the same Eucharist, right?  But the priests and the bishops, they would never stand for it!”

In due time, I selected a small icon of Saint Gregory of Nyssa and paid for it.  I saw the priest walking by and asked him if he would bless it.  I introduced myself and explained that one of the courses I teach at our seminary is about the Church Fathers.  He was in his early to mid-forties and had a surname that was not all Greek, although I am sorry to say I have forgotten it.  We went to his office, where he got out a book of blessings and some holy water.

After blessing the icon, he remarked that such an event, however minor, was a good step towards Christian unity.  He noted that thirty, forty, fifty years ago, it would never have happened.  He longed for reunion between East and West, and he assured me it could happen “very soon,” there being so much in common.  “The big problem,” he said, “is the old folks in the pews, they’d never stand for it.”

For fifty years Popes and Patriarchs have been meeting, embracing and addressing one another as brothers and reciting together the Greek text of the Nicene Creed.  Whether they also drink Greek coffee and talk about icons I do not know.  Meanwhile, in the West there has been a joint Catholic and Lutheran declaration about justification, and there have been innovative efforts such as Pope Benedict XVI establishing the Anglican Ordinariate and reaching out to the SSPX.

As I recall the irony of those conflicting diagnoses of an elderly Greek Orthodox layman and a middle-aged Greek Orthodox priest, I wonder whether the only obstacle to Christian unity, especially between Catholic and Orthodox, is the basic fact that we really don’t want it.  Humans generally find the time, money, and energy to do the things they really want to do.  It could be that in this case our cultural differences, undeniably rich and deep, are more important to us.  It could be we feel threatened by the idea of reunion, unsure what it would look like.  On both sides the question could be:  “Would it mean that they would sometimes come traipsing into our church?  Let’s hope they don’t expect us to do something different because of them.”

It seems that we might be like those vain Christians in Corinth, making private clubs in the name of one of the apostles.  It is cozy to sit in a circle around our own tribal fire and reassure ourselves that only we are the ones who are really doing it right.  We can cite old wounds of history, we can cite fine points of theology and liturgy, we can blame the pride of the respective hierarchies and blame the hidebound laity (or the hidebound hierarchies and the proud laity), but in all those reasons and excuses, amidst all the finger pointing, it is possible we are overlooking Christ.

 

Daniel J. Heisey, O. S. B., is a Benedictine monk of Saint Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he is known as Brother Bruno.  He teaches Church History at Saint Vincent Seminary.