ECUMENISM MAKES ME FEEL GOOD

(OR “Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum)

 As you know, our two dioceses: the Diocese of Qu’Appelle and the Archdiocese of Regina, entered into a Covenant last year. It was an ecumenical achievement of which we can be justifiably proud and which has drawn interest from far and wide. When our two dioceses first investigated the possibility of a covenant between us and then entered into that convenant at the beginning of this year, it was a great sign of hope for many of us and continues to be so.

 I have been involved in ecumenical work for well over forty years of being a priest. Over and over again I have found that whenever we do something together, whenever we do something that affirms that we are indeed all Christians, that we are all sharing something very important to our faith that we hold in common, the atmosphere is always happy.

  People spontaneously feel good about what we are doing with the Covenant, indeed about our coming together here this morning. It is not only that our minds recognize that this is a sensible and good thing to do, but our hearts rejoice as well. Our hearts recognize that this is good. This is not just a pleasant feeling; it is our very self, mind and heart, reacting to a truth that God has placed within us. We are touching on something that is of importance to God and therefore it resonates within us. It satisfies the seeking of the mind and it warms the longings of our heart.

 THE GOODNESS OF LIVING AS ONE.

The Psalms are the songs of the human heart as it reaches out in love to God and equally the song in God’s heart as it reaches out in love to us . Psalm 133 sings such a song, and I will give you the latin first, for it is well known in the hearts of many Catholics especially our priests: “Ecce quam bonum et quam iucundum habitare fratres in unum.”

 “How good it is, how wonderful, wherever people live as one! It is like sacred oil on the head flowing down Aaron’s beard, down to the collar of his robe. It is like the dew of Hermon running down the mountains of  Zion. There God gives blessing: life forever.”

 This Oil of anointing that flowed down Aaron’s beard consecrating him as God’s priest, is often called the “oil of gladness.” Its fragrance and its refreshing power is an image of the goodness and the wonderfulness that is present when people live as one. This living as one, with one mind, with one heart, one accord, or whatever is the principal of that living as one, is a source of blessing from God. The blessing that God gives is “life forever.” We realize then that it would be the source of powerful blessing for all, if we could reach the day when all of us who are followers of Jesus, the Christ, the anointed one, live as one. How good it would be and how wonderful! I believe that, very deep within us, we know and understand, this to be very true.

 Indeed, I don’t think, that deep in our hearts, we, as Christian people, have ever forgotten the image of the early Christian Community which St. Luke describes in chapter 2 of his Acts of the Apostles. Here he described the unity, the oneness of these earliest followers of Jesus:“All who believed were together and had all things in common, they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”Whenever we can discover something of this all encompassing oneness even in the smallest of our efforts together, we sense a bond with what it truly means to live as a disciple of Jesus. And this appeals to us. It makes us feel good. It gives us happiness. It is a blessing for us.

 GOD’S LOVE AS THE SOURCE OF THIS GOODNESS.

So we could well ask: Why does this make us feel good and think happily? I believe it is because at the very heart of our Christian life, what is most important, what is most fundamental, what is all encompassing, what is the basis of all oneness, of all togetherness, of all communion is the incredible understanding that God loves us and longs to be loved by us in return.

 I would like to go back to the Psalms again, to Psalm 18, which opens with a prayer, a very simple and very direct prayer, and perhaps a prayer we are uncomfortable or even afraid to say to God: “I love you…” “I love you, God…” I love you God, my strength.”

 When Jesus saw Peter for the last time on earth in John’s Gospel, that post-Easter morning on the shore of the Sea of Galilee the question he asked him was “Do you love me?” Three times he asks him “Do you love me?” Three times Peter replies: “I love you” “You know I love you.” “You know everything; you know I love you.” I love you, God, my strength.” “I love you Lord.”

 And with that bond of love, that communion of love, that oneness of love, Peter then received from Jesus the care of Jesus’ flock, the Church. That Church entered into the world supported by the prayer of Jesus “that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us,* so that the world may believe that you have sent me.(Jn 17: 21) And with the commandment:  “34I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

 LOVE LONGS FOR UNION AND ONENESS.

It is because God loves us, it is because that love of God for us took flesh in Jesus that we who are his followers live our lives in the bond of love and the oneness of love that St. Peter, the rock on whom the Church of Jesus is built, shows to us. Love demands oneness with the person whom we love. The writer of psalm 73 said:“Whom do I have in heaven but you? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides you… for me it is good to be near God.”

 There is no person in our lives that is like God, neither in heaven or in this world. When it boils down to it, there is truly no one but God to whom we can join our lives if we seek fullness of love and fullness of life. To be near God is essential for our salvation. Indeed, to be one with God is essential for our salvation.

Before receiving Holy Communion in the Eucharist, the Priest says this private prayer:Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, by the will of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit, Your death brought life to the world. By Your holy Body and Blood free me from all my sins, and from every evil. Keep me faithful to your teaching, and never let me be parted from you.

 To be parted from God, to lose that oneness with God, is to lose life itself.

 This oneness with God is the foundation of our relationship with God, and our relationship with God is the foundation of our faith and our religion and our Christian life. Who could ever believe that we poor and sinful and imperfect human beings could indeed be one with God who is all richness, all beauty and all perfection and indeed love itself?

 THE NEED TO BELIEVE THAT GOD LOVES US.

I think that our problem is precisely this: we have great difficulty believing that God truly loves us. Therefore we have difficulty believing that we have been made truly one with God. If we have difficulty believing that we are truly one with God, then we have difficulty believing that we can be one with each other. If we cannot believe that we can be one with each other, then we will never be one as Jesus prayed that we would be one.

 Our coming together in the Covenant between our two dioceses is an affirmation that we do believe that we can move towards being one as disciples of Jesus. It is an affirmation that we believe that this oneness, this unity is not impossible. We do believe that we can be one with each other and that belief is founded in the oneness that we have with God in our faith, a oneness that finds its strength, its energy, its vitality in the love that God has for us. That gives us immense hope.

 Nowhere in the Sacred Scripture do we find a presentation on the reality of the love which God has for His people as in theSong of Songs. I would like to give you a quote from Pope Benedict’s Encylical Letter “Deus Caritas Est” “God is Love” (10) in which he makes reference to theSong of Songs.

 We can thus see how the reception of the Song of Songs in the canon of sacred Scripture was soon explained by the idea that these love songs ultimately describe God’s relation to man and man’s relation to God. Thus the Song of Songsbecame, both in Christian and Jewish literature, a source of mystical knowledge and experience, an expression of the essence of biblical faith: that man can indeed enter into union with God—his primordial aspiration. But this union is no mere fusion, a sinking in the nameless ocean of the Divine; it is a unity which creates love, a unity in which both God and man remain themselves and yet become fully one. As Saint Paul says: “He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:17).

 As Christian people who believe in the need for our church communities to seek to draw closer together, indeed to seek union, we would do well to think a lot about what it means to be loved by God and to love God in return, to be able to say to God: “I love you.” For, as Benedict writes: this union with God is “an expression of the essence of biblical faith.” And then, being able to say to God “I love you”, we can then come to an understanding of the truth that we indeed do enter into a union with God. This union is our most profound and most ancient longing.

 As Pope Benedict says, we do not lose ourselves in this union. We might be tempted to think that because God is so immense, because God’s love is so immense, we will simply be swallowed up in that immensity, become a little drop in the great and nameless ocean of the Divine, as Benedict says. No, we remain who we are and God remains who God is, but we become fully one. And if all of us who are disciples of Jesus, the Christ, have been made fully one with God, how can we then allow ourselves to be divided?

LOVE IS THE POWER THAT BUILDS COMMUNION.

Pope John Paul II in his Encyclical Letter on Christian Unity: “Ut Unum Sint” (21) said this: We proceed along the road leading to the conversion of hearts guided by love which is directed to God and, at the same time, to all our brothers and sisters, including those not in full communion with us.

 He continues on, telling us that when we love, we long for unity and this desire for unity rises even in the hearts of those “who have never been aware of the need for it.” To build this unity and this communion between individuals and communities is a great challenge for us. We struggle for communion in our families, in our friendships and in our parish and church communities. Love is the force and power that builds the communion we seek. Indeed when we love we then find it difficult to tolerate imperfect or weak communion and we strive to deepen that communion and make it ever more perfect.

 The encyclical goes on to teach us that “Love is given to Godas the perfect source of communion—the unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit—that we may draw from that source the strength to build communion between individuals and Communities, or to re-establish it between Christians still divided. Love is the great undercurrent which gives life and adds vigour to the movement towards unity.

 When we love God we are brought into oneness with the one who is the source of our oneness with others, with our communion with them and we receive from that love the strength to build communion with one another.

 Pope Benedict speaks in a particular way of sacramental communion in the Eucharist in “Deus Caritas Est” (14)saying: Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own.

 Although we are not in full communion with each other in our Christian Churches and communities and cannot share in sacramental communion, the Holy Father nevertheless says:Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We become “one body”, completely joined in a single existence. Love of God and love of neighbour are now truly united: God incarnate draws us all to himself.

 I hope that in these reflections have conveyed to some degree how fundamental to the reality of the Church the ecumenical work that we are doing is. It is not simply a pious past-time; it is tied intimately to the most foundational aspect of God’s plan and desire for us that was born into our world in Jesus, God’s Son. It takes us into God’s very heart which beats in the body of Jesus. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. (1 Jn 4:16)That love yearns for union with all who share that love. To seek union with all those who are God’s own is to embody the longing that is in the heart of Jesus, the love of God made flesh. It is through that union that we seek among ourselves as Christians that Jesus will reach out to the whole of creation so that all will become one.

 When we do our part in this journey towards the unity of all Christians, then we also do our part in bringing to fulfillment the prophecy of Jesus who said: 32And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people* to myself.