Where on earth, I wondered, is Burkina Faso when I came across the name in the resource material for this year’s octave of prayer for Christian unity. Thanks to Google I found it to be a landlocked country in west Africa, previously known as the Republic of Upper Volta.
A one-time French colony, it has been rather unstable politically since independence and suffered from droughts and famine. It is one of the least developed countries in the world. About 63.8 per cent of its population practises Islam, while 26.3 per cent are Christian. It is sobering to hear what these people, who witness such a challenging situation, have to say in the prayers and readings they have prepared for this week of ecumenical reflection. They call on us to “reconnect to God’s dream for us – a dream of a unity formed of ties of love and compassion”, while acknowledging that “there are . . . groups within communities, including people from ethnic minority backgrounds and people seeking asylum, who feel particularly vulnerable to violence or being displaced by the threat of violence”. They speak from experience.
The term ecumenical comes from the Greek word oikoumene and is associated with the desire of Christians to overcome centuries of painful division. In earlier times, however, it referred to the Roman Empire and more widely to the whole inhabited world. In the Greek world, centuries before, it meant the civilised world as they understood it. Today, however, it refers almost exclusively to interdenominational co-operation between churches, but we ought not to lose its potential to connect us to this divided and dangerous world because it was for such a situation that the church of Jesus Christ was formed to demonstrate to the world the model community living in peace and harmony guided by his simple rule: “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
According to Monica Furlong, some see signs that the Jesus prayer, ‘that they may be one’, is being answered
But consider how we have failed for hundreds of years because we are much more comfortable with the church as it is. We waste energy, defining ourselves by what we are rather than pursuing that which we are called to be, loving one another as Jesus asks. This does not mean we have to agree with one another; indeed love by its very nature is about embracing difference and diversity as every worthwhile human relationship proves.
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It is difficult to measure where the main churches are on the ecumenical path beyond being polite and courteous but the desire to be in control and exercise power seems to take precedence over love for love’s sake. Yet, according to Monica Furlong, Anglican author and journalist, some see signs that the Jesus prayer, “that they may be one”, is being answered, perhaps in a non-denominational way, “extra muros” as it were.
In her book, With Love to the Church, she writes: “Within the strange, sprawling, quarrelling mass of the churches, within their stifling narrowness, their ignorance, their insensitivity, their stupidity, their fear of the senses and of truth, I perceive another church, one which really is Christ at work in the world. To this church men and women seem to be admitted as much by a baptism of the heart as of the body and they know more of intellectual charity, of vulnerability, of love, of joy, of peace, than most of the rest of us. They’ve learned to live with few defences and so have conquered the isolation which torments us. They do not judge, especially morally; their own relationships make it possible for others to grow.”
The churches in Burkina Faso urge us to “reconnect to God’s dream for us – a dream of a unity formed of ties of love and compassion” but this requires a willingness to change and be changed which, according to Cardinal Newman, is essential for our spiritual advancement: “In a higher world it is otherwise; but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to change often.”