We are
pilgrims on a journey; and our Church is a pilgrim Church. The seven ‘I am’
statements of Jesus in John’s Gospel provide us as pilgrims with the essential,
elementary needs for our journey. Food: I am the bread of life (John 6:35). Light:
I am the light of the world (8:12). A path to follow: I am the Way, the truth
and the life (14:6). A gate to get onto the path: I am the Gate for the sheep
(10:7). An eternal journey: I am the Resurrection and the Life (11:25). A life
that bears the fruit of that pilgrimage: I am the True Vine (15:1). Finally,
and perhaps most important, someone trustworthy to follow: I am the Good
Shepherd (10:11).
In his farewell discourse, Jesus had
prayed that the church should be one (John 17:21), just as his disciples should
be one (John 17:11), ‘that the
world may believe that you have sent me’ (John 17:21). The unity of the church,
in spite of variations in traditions, is to be the supreme testimony to the
truth of the claim that Jesus is God’s son and chosen emissary to his people on
earth. In the words of this morning’s gospel, ‘So
there will be one flock, one shepherd’.
‘God wills the Church, because he wills unity, and unity is an
expression of the whole depth of his self-giving love (agape).’ These were John Paul II’s words in 1995 on the profound
reasons underlying the move towards Christian unity. ‘…promoting Christian unity’, John Paul II affirmed, ‘is not just some sort of “appendix” which is
added to the Church’s traditional activity. Rather, ecumenism is an organic
part of her life and work, and consequently must pervade all that she is and
does; it must be like the fruit borne by a healthy and flourishing tree which
grows to its full stature.’
There is a
powerful summary of ecumenical statements and agreements drawn together by
Cardinal Walter Kasper under the title Harvesting The Fruits. Here are just a few
important ideas drawn from these agreements. First (p. 65), that ‘the
credibility of the Church’s witness in the world is undermined by the sins of
its members, the shortcomings of its human institutions and not least by the
scandal of division. The Church is in constant need of repentance and renewal
so that it can be more clearly seen for what it is: the one, holy body of
Christ.’
Second (pp.
72-3), ‘the concept of koinonia
(communion)… is the term that most aptly expresses the mystery underlying the
various NT images of the Church… Those who have received the same word of God
and have been baptized in the same Spirit cannot, without disobedience,
acquiesce in a state of separation.’ ‘Christian disunity obscures God’s
invitation to communion for all humankind and makes the Gospel we proclaim
harder to hear.’
A third
point is that the mandate of bringing salvation to all is the task of the
entire Christian church and not just one privileged part of it, ‘the true
believers’. ‘The mandate given to the Church to bring salvation to all the
nations constitutes its unique mission. In this way the Church not only
signifies the new humanity willed by God and inaugurated by Christ. It is
itself an instrument of the Holy Spirit in the extension of salvation to all
human beings in all their needs and circumstances to the end of time’ (p. 59).
A fourth and final point concerns the need to
clarify the purpose of talking together as Christians. Few of us expect to see
our inherited confessional distinctions disappear any time soon, if ever. That
is not the point. It is that such distinctions should no longer be the obstacle
that they have been in the past: ‘there is unity in reconciled diversity’ (p.
89). ‘So there will be one flock, one
shepherd.’ The command of Christian ecumenism could not be stated more clearly
than in John 10:16.
