| Dreaming of the day when all obstacles will be removed
On Tuesday morning, 29 June, in the Vatican's Clementine Hall, the Holy
Father received the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His Holiness
Bartholomew I.
Later in the morning, the Patriarch was accompanied to St Peter's
Basilica, where he prayed before the Confessio of St Peter and at
the tomb of Pope Paul VI to commemorate the embrace of the Pope and
Athenagoras I in 1964. The following is a translation of the Patriarch's
address to the Holy Father, given in Italian.
Most Holy Brother,
We are visiting you, Your beloved Holiness, with love, joy and emotion,
to take part in the celebrations of the patronal Feast of our Sister
Church of Rome, over which you preside. We bring you the fraternal embrace
of the Church of Constantinople and the warm good wishes of all of us for
your good health as desired, and for your renewed strength that we hope
God will grant to you. We come with the hope and expectation that in the
not too distant future, everyone will spread knowledge of the teaching and
person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, so that his priestly prayer, "that they
may be one even as we are one", may be fulfilled.
The nature of Christian unity
Actually, the unity of the Churches and their members, their faithful,
must not entail their subordination under a single administrative
organization, nor even a collaboration analogous to the collaboration of
States, nor an ideological alliance or action to achieve a common goal.
This unity is the deepest and most total incorporation of our existence in
Christ, in whom and through whom we live our union as a spiritual event.
Therefore, the dialogues between our Churches
—
although they are concerned with every Church's different conception of
concrete dogmatic and ecclesiastical issues, and although they seek to
encourage the common acceptance of the correct conception so as to achieve
union in the faith and procedures of the Church
— aim
ultimately to communicate the hope that derives from the communion with
Christ of each one, so as to create unity in a lived experience of him as
a Person who recapitulates in himself all things, in the union of the
Persons of the Blessed Trinity.
We rejoice to see that you desire and seek this deep ontological unity
in Christ. This is why we carry on a sincere dialogue with you, Your
Holiness, and with your Church's Delegations, and offer you the experience
concerning the saints of the Orthodox Church, listening with interest to
all that you explain to us, conversing as brothers with their beloved
brothers. There are fluctuations in the dialogue because of the
difficulties that have accumulated in the long history of our division.
But we are confident that it will be brought to a favourable conclusion
that is pleasing to God, and to achieve this we collaborate with you,
"looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith" (Heb 12:2),
without whom we can do nothing.
'Dreaming with joy of the day'
It is true that certain actions, following in directions that were
marked out by previous perceptions
—
and already abandoned or that are gradually being abandoned
—
have caused the suspension or hindrance in the progress of dialogues in
the truth that are being carried out between our Churches. But our
responsibility and the duty that derives from the priestly prayer of the
Lord to contribute to spiritual unity to be lived in practice within his
Church do not allow us to lose hope. It is impossible that the Word of the
Lord fall into the void, be unrealizable or leave us indifferent in our
reaction to it. Therefore, with sincerity and sparing no effort, we are
seeking communion between our Churches, given that fundamental divergences
do not yet permit communion in the Body, Blood and Spirit of Our Lord
Jesus Christ.
We are dreaming with joy of the day on which all obstacles to full
communion will be removed, and pray continuously that this day will not be
long in coming. Moreover, in the expectation and contemplation of it, as
founded on hope, we fraternally embrace you once again with a holy kiss
and we express our delight in this meeting that is a foretaste of the
longed for union in the future, which we hope with all our heart to see
with our own eyes during the days of our earthly life. So may it be.
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