UNITY

 

The theme of the 2021 Week of Prayer for CHRISTIAN UNITY is “Abide in my love and you shall bear much fruit“ (John 15:5-9), and the biblical text is John 15:1-17.

“Today is an important day: the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins,” Pope Francis said on January 17.

“This year, the theme refers to Jesus’s counsel: ‘Abide in my love and you shall bear much fruit.’.

In these days, let us pray together so that Jesus’s desire might be accomplished—that all may be one: unity, that is always superior to conflict.”

In 1964, the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council issued its Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio), and in 1995, St. John Paul II issued Ut Unum Sint, an encyclical letter on commitment to ecumenism. In a 2007 doctrinal note, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith taught that

ecumenism does not have only an institutional dimension aimed at “making the partial communion existing between Christians grow towards full communion in truth and charity.” It is also the task of every member of the faithful, above all by means of prayer, penance, study and cooperation.

Everywhere and always, each Catholic has the right and the duty to give the witness and the full proclamation of his faith. With non-Catholic Christians, Catholics must enter into a respectful dialogue of charity and truth, a dialogue which is not only an exchange of ideas, but also of gifts, in order that the fullness of the means of salvation can be offered to one’s partners in dialogue. In this way, they are led to an ever deeper conversion to Christ.