Fr. Alan's homily for Sunday January 21st 2007

The Third Sunday of Ordinary Time

This is the week of prayer for the Unity of Christians. The Catholic Church has been a part of this week since the time of the Second Vatican Council, though the observance itself dates back to the time between the two world wars and is part of the story of the origins of the World Council of Churches.

Some of you will no doubt remember the time when as far as the Catholic Church was concerned, it was “The One True Church.” We lived embattled lives then, and with good cause, at least in the UK.

Since the late Sixteenth Century, Catholics in England and Wales had been perceived as enemies of the Realm. Queen Elizabeth I had been excommunicated and her subject freed from allegiance to her by the Pope. Coming into England as a priest was mortally dangerous and many priests paid the ultimate price for their priesthood over the succeeding one hundred years. In addition, hundreds of lay Catholic folk endured harassment, fines and seizure of their property because they would not attend Protestant services.

The marginalizing of Catholics continued after the end of the persecutions at the end of the seventeenth century, and it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that the Catholic Relief Acts allowed greater freedom to our forbears to assist at Mass and practice their religion. Even so, anti-Catholic prejudice is still far from being a dead letter, though nowadays it is more subtle.

So we Catholics have come a long way in finding ourselves able to take part in prayer for unity. We have to continue with this, even though more recent developments in the church communities of this country and abroad make that goal seem impossible. Prayer, after all, presupposes the God who works impossible works.

Vatican II spoke of the fullness of Christ’s Church “subsisting in” the Catholic Church, and significantly did not say that it was identical with the Church. We recognise the spirit of Christ in all other ecclesial communities. They are, albeit imperfectly, in union with us. That is why prayer and work for the unity of Christians, however difficult, is not an option but a mandate for us.