Dear Board,

I am grateful to God for what I sensed as His blessing on last night’s reflection with Bill on the ‘Evangelicals and Catholics Together’ theme.  I found it to be an honest time of reflection (this included people expressing pain/disappointment at various aspects of lack of unity, or misunderstandings), on the need for more expressions of Christian unity, and the need to draw on the riches of our respective traditions.

This morning I was amazed to learn that Pope Francis’ Wednesday audience meditation yesterday was on the same topic of our gathering: “constant openness to dialogue and appreciation of the gifts of others”.  The coinciding of these words with what happened last night is amazing.

In Christ, Soren

POPE FRANCIS
St. Peter’s Square, Wednesday, 8 October 2014

“Dear Brothers and Sisters: In our catechesis on the Church, we now consider our fellow Christians who belong to other confessions or traditions. Divisions between Christ’s followers are clearly contrary to his will, as expressed in his prayer to the Father that all might be one, so that the world might believe (cf. Jn 17:21). Christ desires us to be united in his love and in communion with one another; yet throughout history the Church has experienced temptations against this unity, leading to tragic divisions. We must not be resigned to these divisions, but must join our prayer to that of Jesus in imploring among all his followers constant openness to dialogue and appreciation of the gifts of others. In loving the Lord and sharing the riches of his love, we will better see what unites us rather than what separates us. By dwelling in the truth, and practicing forgiveness and charity, we will be ever more conformed to Christ’s will, reconciled with one another, and led closer to the goal of full unity which he wills for all his disciples.”