Kenya: Worldwide Week for Christian Unity Focuses On Constant Prayer

Posted to the web 15 January 2008
Nairobi
Christians around the world are preparing for the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity which starts Friday.
The main biblical text for this year's event is 1 Thessalonians 5: 17: "Pray without ceasing", which stresses the essential role of prayer within the life of the Christian community as its members grow in their relationship to Christ and to one another.
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This year marks the 100th anniversary of the inauguration of the week of Prayer for Christian Unity. A hundred years ago, Father Paul Wattson, an Episcopal (Anglican) priest and co-founder of the Society of the Atonement at Graymoor (Garrison, New York), introduced a Prayer Octave for Christian Unity that was first celebrated from 18 to 25 January 1908.
The meditations for the eight days in this year's material for the week of prayer build on the notion that prayer for Christian unity, spiritual ecumenism, is foundational to all other aspects of the search for unity among Christians.
In a message for the event, the chairman of Commission for Ecumenism of the Kenya Episcopal Conference, Bishop Philip Anyolo of Homa Bay recalls the words of the bishops of Kenya in their 2006 pastoral letter on ecumenism:
"The journey of promoting Christian Unity central to Christian identity and the pastoral priorities of the Catholic Church are rooted in our faith in Jesus Christ and the zeal for the Church and it's unity.
"For this very reason, ecumenism is not just some sort of "appendix" that 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."
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Bishop Anyolo further encourages parish communities and pastoral collaborators the christian Unity is the work of the Holy Spirit.
"Every time the baptized come together to pray, it is the Spirit who guides them and teaches them how to pray. It is the same Spirit who builds the Church's unity. It is the Holy Spirit dwelling in those who believe, rewarding and ruling over the entire Church, who brings about the marvelous communion of those who believe, and joins them so intimately together in Christ that he is the principle of the Church unity."
But unity is also a journey made by the Christian to embrace the other. The bishop invites "individual Christians, and where it is possible and opportune in you local groups and communities, to meet each other in prayer through a healing of some memories of division and rivalry, and to inspire each other to grow in even grater fidelity to Christ and to the Gospel."