Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2025.

The Augustinian Recollect Alberto Fuente (Barcelona, Spain, 1969), to end the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, recalls the Augustinian proposal of “living unanimously in the same house and having one soul and one heart”.

Today we end the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. In the Catholic Church this celebration is a legacy of the ecumenical movement with Protestant roots, of the Second Vatican Council and of a few years of optimism, perhaps somewhat naive, in which the union of Christians seemed an easy achievement to get.

More than a half a century has passed since the Catholic Church joined this celebration (1966), and we are more aware of the difficulties of a unity that is a gift from God and a human task, never fully achieved in this world and therefore, ultimately, always of an eschatological nature.

It is not easy to creatively combine the tension between the values of unity and diversity with their negative poles of uniformity and division present in all the spheres (anthropological, social and religious) of a historical, finite and sinful human being, and yet radically open to God and to others in a relationship of communion.

If we go to God the Trinity, the foundation of our faith, we discover that in God, but only in Him, there is that perfect balance of communion in the unity and plurality of the three divine persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In every created reality, image of God the Trinity, there will be present the radical impulse to that communion and the real obstacle of sin, which breaks the communion in either of its two aspects, either that of the proud and uniform imposition or that of the selfish and short-sighted emphasis that encloses in one’s own to the point of separation and division.

To be more specific, in the current reality of ecumenism I perceive the influence, negative in my view, of ideologies. And this is true in all spheres: in the global multi-religious world; among Christians of all denominations; and in the most concrete, in our Catholic parishes and communities.

Today, alliances and even experiences of apparent communion often occur, but which are actually based on ideology.

And so, conservative Catholics ally themselves with conservative Protestants, or with reactionary orthodoxy, or with nationalist-conservative Zionism and even, in certain aspects, based on the confluence of certain “non-negotiable values,” with radical Islam or even with agnostic or atheistic radical conservatism or liberalism.

And, on the other hand, progressive Christians ally themselves in a similar way with all people who share that ideology, whatever their religious group.

All this religious dialogue between conservatives and progressives, although limited by lacking deep roots, seems legitimate and good to me. What I criticize is that many times its foundation is ideological, social, political and economic concordance and interest, and not the evangelical root of love for and of God and for one’s brothers.

Being Christians, above any ideology, is to follow the invitation and to train oneself to overcome all hatred and all condemnation and to live from forgiveness and active dialogue, that which listens, accompanies, understands and loves.

We live in a very divided society and with a real lack of contact, dialogue and recognition of the other. Saint Augustine was very aware of this reality of division, which he experienced firsthand, whose root is sin; but also that we are created and redeemed by and for the human-divine unity-communion, which is our origin and destiny:

“The first reason why you have gathered in community is so that you may live unanimously in the house and have one soul and one heart directed toward God.”

Thus, for those of us who follow his charism, this communion, although it is an eschatological task that is never fully achieved, is, above all, the grace of love poured out by the Holy Spirit in our hearts (Romans 5:5).

Thus, true communion can only be the fruit of the theological virtues of faith, hope and, above all, charity. And as Jesus taught us very well in his double commandment of love for God and neighbor, the true experience of the Christian God of love for/of God is intimately and necessarily connected with the true, arduous and costly task of love for neighbor.