Fr. Don’s Weekly Letter ~ 17 November 2024

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

This week I had the luxury of most of a day spent with three retired Lutheran pastor friends, and we talked about the 20 years we worked together as ecumenists in the work of Christian Unity. All three of them were pastors in the northern Virginia area, and all were involved in our several local and state dialogues as we were able with our own parish duties. At times we recalled some of the really funny moments of our work together, but the truth is it has always been a struggle to keep the movement alive. Now it seems we are hitting an all-time low.

Not just the Catholics, ecumenism isn’t really a priority for leadership in any of the Christian churches. Many reasons have been given for this: tightening budgets, concern over diminishing congregation sizes, maybe even a sense that we have gone about as far as we can go with this work.

I said that, after my 20+ years in this work, I am realizing that the movement has been more outcome-oriented. What is measurable that we are to get out of a dialogue that we can publish? What new discoveries might we make about each other that could change the context of a conversation that might have taken place (or not) 25 years ago. Have we learned anything in the meantime?

These kinds of outcomes don’t come out easily -- sometimes not at all, but it is the process of dialogue that keeps the relationship alive. As long as we are talking with and listening to each other, and open to the idea of discovering something new, there is hope. Where hope is not, there is just silence.

My pastors and I admitted that it is getting quieter and quieter.

One of the reasons could be that bishops have so many worries today that Ecumenism doesn’t land high enough on the priority list to get attention or promotion. We have always gathered around our bishops in solidarity and optimism because of their encouragement. That doesn’t happen any more, generally speaking, in any Christian church. Also, there are a few of us who have kept this alive for a number of years, appearing to be vibrant, where that may not have been the honest truth. And we are not getting younger!
Two initiatives which we had celebrated annually with great success had been the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and the State LARCUM (Lutheran Anglican Catholic United Methodist) Committee’s annual conference when we would invite a speaker and gather for prayer and formation in Christian unity. We were struggling with numbers and bringing our leaders together before the pandemic, but it seems that we have lost most of our steam post-pandemic.

I asked my friends: do you think these could become more grassroots efforts, something springing up from the community itself, reestablishing these relationships and planning prayer services and conferences? We decided yes, this might just be the way to win the bishops’ attention once again when they see what is possible. As I wrote to a friend of mine working on initiatives in Palestine, sometimes it is easier to get people to join a movement rather than create it.

This week I would like to place a challenge before you, and I am going to forward it to the members of our diocesan ecumenical commission and every Christian pastor I know. I challenge us to become the context of open dialogue and friendship with our Christian neighbors and start that groundswell of a grassroots movement that seeks unity where all we can see right now is division. It would do our own Church some good, too, if we focused more on our agreements.

A good place to start is our Burke/Springfield Interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Service on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It won’t be only a Christian gathering, we have friends coming from Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and many other religions as well. But perhaps over the course of the evening you might meet a pastor or a member of another church and ask the question: Is this something we can do together? Does unity begin with us? Then you can begin to dream what that might look like not only in spiritual relationship but also shared responsibilities in caring for our poor and people without homes, the neighbors in need we share. One neighborhood, one voice. And we will find that that voice is the voice of Jesus himself as we listen to each other.

Congratulations to our Confirmation kids this week, let us pray for them.

The Lord be with you.