On Friday night, the Vatican hosted an ecumenical prayer service commemorating both the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962 and the feast day of Pope St. John XXIII, who opened the council. It was a moving sight—a simple service held at twilight in the Square of the Christian Protomartyrs, where some of the earliest Christians, including St. Peter, were killed for their faith. A modest plaque marks the place where St. Peter was crucified upside-down.
Attending the service were synod delegates, including the “fraternal delegates” from other Christian denominations, and leaders of various Christian denominations who live in Rome. The delegates read passages from the Vatican II documents “Lumen Gentium” and “Unitatis Redintegratio” that echoed with historic resonance—both because of the location—the site of the deaths of our shared Christian martyrs—and because the council referred to itself in the first passage as “this Sacred Synod.”
“This Sacred Synod gathered together in the Holy Spirit eagerly desires, by proclaiming the Gospel to every creature (cf. Mk 16:15) to bring the light of Christ to all human beings,” one representative read from “Lumen Gentium.” Another, quoting the same document, read: “In all of Christ’s disciples the Spirit arouses the desire to be peacefully united, in the manner determined by Christ, as one flock under one shepherd, and he prompts them to pursue this end.”
This cry for peace and unity struck me as particularly moving at a time of war that has exacerbated the fractures between the three “People of the Book”—Christians, Jews and Muslims. That hit home, in particular, in the reading from Psalm 122: “Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together…. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” And the Gospel from John was the famous one from which Pope St. John Paul II drew the name of his ecumenical encyclical “Ut Unum Sint”: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one” (emphasis added).
Throughout the service, music was provided by a small group of musicians who appeared to be in their 20s and 30s, singing and playing in the style of Taizé, the French ecumenical community whose simple chants invite everyone to join in. The prayers and songs were delivered in a variety of languages, underscoring the diversity that was being brought together on the site of a powerful shared history. Five women proclaimed the Gospel—again, the verse begging “that they may all be one”—in Portuguese, Chinese, Swahili, Arabic and Malayalam.
The readings from “Unitatis Redintegratio,” which were incorporated into the prayers of the faithful, also drew out themes that have been important in the synod, like the need for conversion and a grounding in our shared baptismal dignity. “There can be no ecumenism worthy of the name without a change of heart,” one passage said. The next: “Baptism therefore constitutes a powerful sacramental bond of unity among all those who have been regenerated by it.”
Unfortunately, after a long afternoon of open interventions in the synod hall, Pope Francis must have been tired; he skipped the meditation he was set to offer, though the text was later published by the Vatican, and moved straight to the closing prayer. Nonetheless, the service was deeply moving and revealed why there has been so much enthusiasm from the ecumenical community around this synod, so much so that the Synod Secretariat invited more fraternal delegates this year while keeping the rest of the membership the same.
