Courtesy of Rita Salerno

 

“To dream the communion, to build up the dialogue” is the theme chosen by the Sae, Secretariat Ecumenical Activity, for the 47^th Session of ecumenical formation that, like every year, calls together the persons assigned to works and others, at Chianciano Terme in the month of July. Among others, the Biblist Pietro Stefani, the Valdese Lady Pastor Letizia Tomassone and the President of Ucei, Amos Luzzatto, participated in the Session.

We have addressed some questions on the subject to Mario Gnocchi, born in Cremona on September 8, 1934. He has been attending the SAE since 1968, and they elected him President in 2004.

Which contribution does the Sae and particularly the sessions of ecumenical formation offer to the journey of unity among the religions?

“Sae’s priority field of commitment is ecumenism understood in its specific sense of encounter and inter-Christian, inter-confessional dialogue. Centred as it is in the hundredth anniversary of the ecumenical movement, the session of this year necessarily privileges this specific area

However, it is equally certain that the ecumenical dialogue cannot avoid looking out at the ampler inter-religious horizon. This is because the dialogue experience has in itself a potentiality and a fecundity that we cannot block within rigid frontiers, because it tends to expand towards every dimension of our intellectual and spiritual life. It is so also because the more the ecumenism induces the Christians to converge to the centre and to dig deep into one’s own faith, and the more it opens and enables them to face a serene and free confrontation with the other religious traditions. If, in short, according to the Encyclical Letter Ut unum sint, by John Paul II, the ecumenism helps all the Christians “to discover the unfathomable richness of truth”, this disposes them, at the same time, to trace back the reverberations and echoes of the mentioned truth in every authentic spiritual experience.   

There will be an opening to the inter-religious dialogue also in our next ecumenical session, above all in relation with the three great monotheisms. The given thematic will be the object of one day of the assembly works and of study-groups. However, even beyond these specific moments, the presence of some friends from non-Christian areas, part of the SAE family, guarantees the attention towards  the inter-religious dialogue as usual.   

Which image would you use today in order to outline the situation, from this viewpoint?

“Some time ago, when, before the arisen difficulties on the ways of the ecumenical dialogue, they began to speak about ecumenical winter or frost, sometimes I reversed the image. I said that we were living the consequences of the ecumenical thaw. The true winter season and the true frost were behind us, when the ice that blocked the entire territory forbade every relation. The thaw that came with the beginning of the ecumenical relations has re-opened the ways of communication and encounter, but it has also stripped the asperities and the level differences of the ground, which the ice covered. Now, these differences and asperities oppose obstacles, making the approaches more difficult of what one could think at first. It is here that the ecumenism undergoes a trial, namely in the capacity of facing these obstacles with realism, but without desperation, with critical lucidity, but without renouncing the prophetic vision and the force of hope; with constant tiny steps and partial advances, knowing that the overcoming of every even little obstacle re-opens and widens the horizon.

I believe that, though in a different context, we can refer something similar to this to the inter-religious relations. Even in this case we are living a time of approaches, of contacts, of new possibilities of knowledge and confrontation. However, also in this case, according to the way the relation with the other passes from the image to the concrete reality, we realise that the thing is not always easy –sometimes it is rather very difficult- to understand, recognise and welcome one another just as one is. As usual, in these cases, the temptation of withdrawing to one’s own boundaries (the temptation of an “identity” understood in a static and rigid manner) follows the initial impulse of openness. Therefore, even to this purpose we are going through a delicate ridge, which requires clearness of heart and firmness of mind, above all the power of hope”.

Paraphrasing the title of the 2010 session, can hope become a reality?   

“I would say that hope is already a reality. In fact, hope is not inert expectation, but active tension. He who hopes does not entrust himself to the uncertain probability of external events, but sets on a journey towards the goal: the great Biblical figure of hope is Abraham. He leaves “without knowing where to go” (Hebrews 11, 8), but just because of this, according to Gregory of Nissa, he knows to be on the good road. He does not trust his own calculations, but the Word and the Promise of the Lord. He who hopes is already on his journey towards the hoped reality; he already touches its edge. In this sense, hope enlightens the present already, changing its aspect and its sense. The Apostle Paul says that we hope something that is not yet visible (this is very much true in the ecumenical experience), but “we have been saved in hope”, therefore, we keep on waiting with perseverance”. He who has welcomed the ecumenical vocation lives this tension, not deprived of fatigue, but also as a source of intimate joy”.

We should awake the ecumenical sensitivity from our tender age. Is this the reason why they have planned courses for children and adolescents during this session?  

“The decision of proposing a group activity for children and adolescents, aims effectively at a double scope. On one hand it offers to the parents the possibility to follow the works of the session, therefore, it favours the participation of the families; on the other hand it involves children and adolescents in an experience of formation, according to their capacity and sensitivity.

It is an experience that does not exclude games and amusement, but that implies also moments of reflections, in syntony with what the adults are doing, and moments of participation in the common activity (for instance, the liturgies and some symbolic expressions), inducing the participants to reciprocal knowledge and collaboration. When the meeting takes place among persons of different religious and cultural traditions, evidently there is a specific, though embryonic, ecumenical or inter-religious experience, which translates into lasting friendship”.  

In this context, which role could the religious play in order to favour the ecumenical journey and an increased sensitivity on behalf of the communities of believers with regard to this theme?

“The contribution that the religious can offer, and actually offer, to the general ecumenical experience and to the particular journey of SAE, is of an inestimable value. Let us not forget that the ecumenism proceeds along different paths: from the research and the theological dialogue up to ethical commitment, fetching, first, from spiritual sources. The intuition and the passionate testimony of Paul Couturier, soul of the ecumenical movement, is a spiritual ecumenism. Of course, this is not to be understood as vaporous and illusive spiritualism, in which one can compensate the frustrations suffered in other fields. We must understand it in its true value, as a renewal source and as radical conversion of the heart and the mind, investing not only the personal life, but also the communitarian and ecclesial life, at all levels and in all its expressions.

True, the spiritual dimension of ecumenism is a responsibility of all the believers, but doubtlessly the religious can live it in the intensity and fruitfulness of their own charism. The “invisible monastery” which Paul Couturier spoke of included the laity, but those who have chosen a life of religious consecration have a meaningful part in it. Courtier himself was in strict relation with monastic communities that had welcomed his appeal to pray for the unity. They were not only catholic monasteries, but also from other churches, (the first real “monastery of the Christian unity” was that of the reformed nuns in Switzerland, Grandchamp).  Even today, there is a net of religious communities, from different confessions, whose prayer reaches the Father in unison; they reach there where “the walls of separation” do not reach. They pray so that the invocation of Jesus may be realised, “.that they may be one”. This is the vital pulse of ecumenism; here is its inexhaustible source of regeneration; here is the guarantee of its present and its future.

The monastic and religious spirituality, together with prayer, waters and makes the ecumenical experience to bear fruit. We perceive this directly in the SAE.  The presence, friendship and communion of monks, nuns and religious, who share our passion and hope for unity, infuse support and inspiration in us”.  

The ethical dimension occupies an ever ampler space in uneasy moments like the present ones. How does the SAE face this indispensable exigency?

“No doubt, the ethical dimension is of an impellent actuality today at all levels: civil, political, religious. However, it has always had an enormous relevance in the ecumenical movement, from its very origin. One of its fundamental components, in fact, has been the movement of Life and Work. This movement has pursued the ideal of Christian unity on the way of ethical commitment, addressed to the major issues of peace, justice and the right of the people. The Ecumenical Council of the Churches and the other major ecumenical organisms have continued to go along this path up-to-date, for instance:   the European ecumenical assemblies of Basilea and Graz, and now the international ecumenical convocation of Kingston on peace, which they have planned for the coming year.

Sae also, in its modern measure, has always paid a lively attention to the ethical themes. They dedicated entire sessions to them and have always had a relevant space also in those not specifically held in that sense. They will probably dedicate the 2011 session expressly to the ethics.  

It is the matter of a complex thematic dedicated, not without points of friction, also at ecumenical level. 

On some aspects (the ones mentioned above, peace, justice, safeguard of creation) we have full consensus and active collaboration among the churches, but on others (sexuality, bio-ethical questions) there is a clash of different sensitivity and doctrinal orientations. This is not so much for what concerns the fundamental values, as for what regards their translation into the historical level and into the public area. It is just because of this that we need to start a serious and serene dialogical confrontation”.

To you, can we still speak of resistances in the Churches against the ecumenical matter? How could we face them?  

“Certainly, even today we register resistances to ecumenism in the Churches; under certain aspects they happen just today with certain keenness.

Sometimes it is the matter of explicit attitudes of suspicion or contrariness; more often there are internal resistances that etiolate some even sincere external declarations. This happens in all the churches, though in different modalities. We observe the risk that every church, in the name of the truth and faithfulness to one’s own tradition, proposes herself to the others with such a pre-definition of one’s own boundaries, availability and in-availability, as to reduce the dialogue to a static confrontation among un-surmountable positions, rather than opening them to higher and deeper horizons of new non-explored ways. In this case, the hoped koinonìa, the reconciled and hoped unity in diversity, would fall down to a pacific conviviality –perhaps also an active and voluntary collaboration- among diversities, which are side-by-side, but self-sufficient. They may be reciprocally respectful, but not in communication. The ut omnes unum sint, then, would change into an ut multa simul sint. Another more subtle, more or less unaware form of resistance or at least of impoverishment of the authentic ecumenical spirit manifests itself in a kind of “normalisation” of the ecumenism, reducing it to one of the many rubrics of the pastoral agenda and of the liturgical calendar”.

Which are the milestones along the hundred years of the ecumenical journey?

“This speech could become long and analytic. I shall try to condense it into synthetic notes.

a) Unity is a gift of the Father, promised and invoked by Christ, waited in supplication by the Spirit. The ecumenism is, first docility to the Word and to the spirit of the Lord. It is a wonder at the vision of the “great things” aroused by him (the “mirabilia Dei” which the Encyclical Letter “Ut unum sint” speaks of). At the end of the world Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, in June 1910, Charles Brent, the Episcopalian Bishop who started the movement of “Faith and Constitution”, declared, «During the past days a new vision has wrapped us. Whenever God gives us a vision, he shows us also a new responsibility, so that you and I will go away from this Assembly with a new duty to fulfil». See, the ecumenism is the fulfilment of a responsible commitment, however, born from a “vision” that the grace of the Lord opens to our eyes; it is the response to His call.

b) This vision and this call translate themselves into the recognition of our common sin and into the availability to conversion. Even for this purpose we can remember what President John Mott said at the conclusion of the Conference in Edinburgh, “We are humiliated by the discovery that the major obstacle against the diffusion of Christianity is within us ( … ). This means that we must commit ourselves not only to revise our projects in favour of the Kingdom of God, but also, and above all, to revise with greater faithfulness the projects concerning our personal life”.

However, we must not limit conversion to the personal sphere; it must extend to the communitarian and ecclesial dimension. In this sense, the word of the Council is clear. The testimony of St. John is valid also for the faults against unity, «If we say that we have not sinned, we turn God into a liar and his Word is of no use». Therefore, let us ask forgiveness from God and our brethren, as we forgive those who sin against us” (UR 7).

c) The knowledge of our sin does not end in a sterile and bitter clinging on ourselves, but it melts at the joyful recognition of God’s mercy, which opens the ways to reconciliation and unity. The human faults have dug deep furrows of division, but have not been able to destroy the communion of grace in which all the Christians are rooted, as gift of God in Christ, guaranteed by the faithfulness of the Father, which is stronger than human unfaithfulness.   

It is from this deep fundamental communion that we can start with hope for every progress on the way of full reconciliation. In this sense, what unites us is truly more important and stronger than what divides us.

d) The ecumenism has caused a kind of Copernican revolution in the conscience and life of the churches. In fact, they have understood that they must remove their eyes from themselves: that they must stop being at the centre of their own horizon. They must turn, (covert themselves), to the sun that illumines and vivifies and towards which each person receives the call to tend towards Jesus Christ, Word of the Father, Way and Truth, without any one presuming  to absorb its light and force  exclusively in oneself.  

In this conversion they have re-discovered –and the ecumenism keeps on reminding us- that Jesus calls every church and every Christian to give an authentic and faithful testimony to the Word and that no human expression, despite faithful proclamation and communication, can exhaust it in oneself and appropriate it. All need to listen to the echo also through other voices. No historical itinerary, though faithfully proceeding along the Way, can presume to have gone along it completely and to exclude every other journey. The ecumenism opens us to the humble and joyful experience of the transcendent Word of God, that founds and authenticates every human word, always remaining in “infinite excess”,  if compared to this, as the  font which St Ephrem Siro speaks of and that quenches everybody’s thirst without being drained by anyone. The ecumenism induces us to search the truth with so much love as to push us always beyond the reached one and to welcome with gratitude every reflex that could come to us from each searcher. “The ecumenical dialogue”, John Paul II writes in a quoted passage of the unum sint, “which stimulates the parts involved in it to interrogate, understand, explain oneself reciprocally, allows unexpected discoveries”. The intolerant polemic and controversies have transformed into incompatible statements what actually was the result of two visions tending to scrutinise the same reality but from two different viewpoints. Today we must find the formula that, catching the reality in its entirety, may allow to transcend partial readings and to eliminate false interpretations (…). Even in this context, all that the Spirit works in “others” can contribute to the edification of every community and, in a certain way, to instruct us on the mystery of Christ.  

The ecumenism asks the Churches to live and to witness faithfully their own traditions, their own spirituality and doctrinal patrimony. They are gifts of the Spirit entrusted to them for the common good, in true, dynamic, not jealous faithfulness, tending to relation and exchange, rooted in the memory, but not fossilised in inert repetition and in fearful clinging on the past. It must be alive in freedom and growth, therefore, in the capacity of critical revision and renewal, of purification and listening, of faithful openness to the inedited and the surprises of the Spirit. The ecumenical conversion is a tending towards the centre, a digging into the depth and essential of one’s own conscience of faith and historical tradition, setting free from what makes things opaque, contaminated, or alters the authentic nucleus, the vital root of one’s own spiritual patrimony. In a not very recent, but still actual document of the Italian church (The ecumenical formation in the particular church), we read, “The ecumenism is not an exposition of one’s faith at the risk of its attenuation or even its loss. Rather, it is a stimulus to the growth of truth to a “being more”, largely fetching from all the sources that God digs and opens for us”.