For many years Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch has been engaged in ecumenical dialogue, especially with the Roman Catholic Church and Islam. This past September, in a message delivered before a Roman Catholic and Orthodox audience and reported in the Service Orthodoxe de Presse (#282, Nov. 2003, 22-24), the Patriarch issued a call for “prophetic initiatives” needed to lead ecumenical dialogue out of its present impasse. The following are excerpts from that address, which focuses on the theme of fraternal love.
...I am convinced that theological dialogue between us needs to continue, not with the aim of converting the other to what each of us considers to be “our truth,” but to convert ourselves, together, to the fullness of the Truth of Christ. This Truth is no abstract concept, nor does it belong to us. It is a Truth that is always open, one that can only be discerned in humility and in love. We must stop regarding ourselves as the “owners” of a truth of which we are merely humble stewards. Let us stop using it as a polemical weapon, as an offensive or defensive apologetical tool. Let us listen together to what the Spirit is saying to the Churches!
It seems to me that the Spirit often feels Himself a stranger in His Church, and that he moans in distress over the fact that those who claim the Name of the Son are content with the status quo, unconcerned by the flagrant scandal of their divisions. We should make no mistake: despite often deceptive appearances, the ecumenical movement is in a state of regression. It has become an institution, merely one among others. What is left of the prophetic events of its beginning, incarnated by such figures as Pope John XXIII and Patriarch Athanagoras?
“Woe to him through whom scandal comes!” (Matt 18:7). The scandal is the comfort in which we have accepted to live; it’s our Pharisaic contentment with things as they are. ...It is our refusal [to seek] and to take the risk of love for our brother. ...What will it take for us to admit that our divisions render the Lord unrecognizable, that they “divide Christ” (1 Cor 1:13), and that they are contrary to His clear will to have us become one “so that the world might believe” (Jn 17:21)?
...Let us be clear: this is no appeal for syncretism or convenient compromises. It is a call to renounce fear, anxiety, calculated self-interest, that is, our way of thinking against one another. It is a call to love each other within the framework of our differences, to learn to discern what is essential and what is secondary, and to decide, once and for all, to work together, in order to fulfill together our common vocation as servants. True love banishes fear. It does not hesitate to suffer for the beloved. Those who love truly are willing to die to themselves, ...to love the other as themselves (Matt 22:29), and to assume the other as a sacrament of union with God and with the brother.
But for that to happen, we need to free ourselves from our ages-old complexes, our inhibitions, our desire always to be “right.” ...We need to be attentive to the other, to reject whatever might embarrass or constrain the other. We need to look for the best in the other, and to convince ourselves that other truly is a brother, since in Christ we are both adopted children of the same Father. Let us put no conditions on our love, for genuine love is wholly unconditional.
“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others,” St Paul admonishes the Philippians (2:4). This is how the first Christians sought to live. We have no other solution than to live in the same way with other Christians. And we need to do so not in words but in acts, acts which enable us not only to walk together and live together, but to grow and to bear witness together, urging each other to be ever more worthy of the hope that is in us (cf. 1 Pet 3:15).
Christians—and their Churches—should bind themselves by a kind of pact of honor. My own wounds lead me to call it a non-aggression pact, since certain forms of past and even more recent behavior of our Churches can easily be seen as aggressive toward our brothers. Yet the hope and conviction that “the gates of hell” (Matt 16:18) will never prevail should enable such a pact to lead our two Churches [Orthodox and Catholic] to commit themselves—before God and before the Sister-Church—never again to do anything that will bring harm to the other, that will make their pastoral task more difficult, or that will in any way cause scandal. This should be our commitment, however important our task, even if we are convinced we are acting with just cause and within the limits of our own responsibility or jurisdiction. The most important thing is love for the brother. Love is prior to knowledge. Love enables us better to be grasped by that Truth which is only fully lived in communion. We need to remind ourselves of the ancient maxim: “In what is certain, unity; in what is debatable, freedom; but in all things, love.”
Such a pact should be joined by an irrevocable decision to collaborate, everywhere possible or necessary, in service to the poor, in defense of life and the environment, in certain pastoral tasks, in a loving encounter among other religious bodies, and in the struggle to make more human the general world order. As I allowed myself to express it to Pope John-Paul II, at the time of his visit to Damascus in 2001: “we are called to wipe away the tears of all those who weep.” I would like to mention in this regard that Catholic and Orthodox Churches in the region of Antioch decided some years ago to engage in just such cooperation, and it has already begun to bear fruit.
We have an urgent need for prophetic initiatives, in order to lead the ecumenical movement out of the morass in which it is increasingly bogged down. We have an urgent need for prophets and saints who can help our Churches free themselves ever more from their earthly constraints, to lead them to dare to repent and to change through mutual forgiveness. The hierarchy and the faithful of our Churches should rival each other in making significant and powerful gestures in this respect, in order to persuade our hearts and to convince all of us that the best way to bear witness to Christ in these dark times is to work together toward bringing about unity among Christians. This is without any doubt the will of God. And it is also the desire of our faithful. Let us learn, then, to hear their voice!