This day, the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter at Rome, sadly no longer observed in the Universal Calendar, marks, in a tradition spanning much of the 20th Century, the start of the Week (or Octave) for Christian Unity. It ends on the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul on the 25th January. The logic of the choice of these dates requires no elucidation here.
What is Christian Unity? It is the point at which all Christians come together to share fully in the sacramental life of the One Holy Church founded during His life on Earth by Our Lord Jesus Christ, with all the means of grace with which He endowed Her, so that all may access the plenitude of God’s Grace – His keenest desire. This is not then some warm and cuddly feeling about brotherly fellowship, and acknowledging (let alone celebrating) our 'differences', but means only one thing – the coming into the fold of the One Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church of all our separated Brethren. This is œcumenism. As those who have the privilege by birth and by grace to already be here, the burden to pray for this glorious end falls mainly to us. It has been, indeed, a part of Tuitio Fidei, our work in the Order of Saint John, for over 900 years.
In these gloomy wintry and covid-bitten days, we may cheerfully reflect on one way the Order has assisted in this work - the annual London Corpus Christi Procession. Here we take Our Blessed Eucharistic Lord out into our Protestant and secular city. This is something each and every one of us, every Knight, Dame and Companion, should do every single day, bringing the Hope and Joy of Eternal Salvation into the humdrum world we inhabit – thirsting, yearning, as it is at every moment for the Grace it cannot yet see or understand.
While praying, however, for the conversion of our Brethren, we should not neglect to pray for our own ongoing conversion, for unless we are ourselves wholly united to Christ we can make only very poor soldiers in his army, very poor nurses is the covid-ward of the soul.
Our Right Reverend and dear Confrere, who this week celebrated the 10th anniversary of his priestly ordination and of the foundation of his Institute (see the previous post), Monsignor Keith Newton, in whose joy we thus share, presents these truths very beautifully in this short video from the last Corpus Christi Procession, 18 months ago. He, and the Ordinariate, are a joyful witness to the reality, and the possibility, of Christian Unity.
Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us.
Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us.
Blessed Adrian Fortescue, pray for us.
(The picture at the top is the Conversion of S Paul by Caravaggio, painted for S Maria del Popolo, Rome, ca.1610.)
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