“Church is the seamless tunic of Jesus”, says St. Augustine. It is often taken to symbolize the unity of the Church today. But this Seamless Robe of Christ is torn apart and made dreadful due to the wounds of division. The sad history of the St. Thomas Christian Church of India bears witness to the divisions that happened in the 16th and 17th centuries in the Church. Ever since the divisions in the Church, she has been committed to the efforts to heal the wounds of divisions and to realize the restoration of the unity of the Church of Christ. These ecumenical efforts of the St. Thomas Christians had a systematic beginning with the Roman Journey of Mar Joseph Kariattil and Fr. Thomas Paremmakkal, which continued through the efforts of Thachil Mathoo Tharakan and later through Nidhirickal Mani Kathanar at the end of the 19th Century. When these efforts had partial success in 1930 through the Reunion Movement, the Church of St. Thomas Christians underwent numerous challenges and tribulations. The Second Vatican Council, a new spring in the history of the Church, paved a new path in the history of Ecumenism. That Council “inaugurated a new ecumenical era of which the Synod is an expression and witness in its active desire to help the whole Church advance along the path of full unity.” Besides that, the time after the Council is marked with an array of magisterial teachings that herald a new dawn of Christian Unity.
Pope Benedict XVI, on the very next day of his election in 2005, called the cardinals together in the Sistine Chapel to outline his vision of the papacy and the priorities of his mission. He told the cardinals that fostering the unity of Christians would lie at the very pinnacle of his ministry. The Pope went on to say that the central role of the bishop of Rome is to be the guarantor of the unity of the followers of Christ. According to him, promoting Christian unity – is part of the “supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time.”
On 11 October 2024, addressing the second session of the 16. Bishops Synod at Vatican, Pope Francis called the efforts for Christian Unity or the Ecumenical Movement as a Synodal Journey. Like synodality, the unity of Christians is essential to their witness: unity is for the sake of mission. And addressing the fraternal delegates and leaders of other Christian Churches gathered for the occasion, Pope Francis echoed the words of Saint John XXIII, who, at the opening of the Second Vatican Council, expressed his longing “to work and suffer for the dawn of the day when Christ’s prayer at the Last Supper will be fulfilled for all”.
Pope Francis explained that Christian unity and synodality are deeply intertwined and described synodality as the path God expects of the Church in the third millennium. Underlining the ecumenical dimension of the synodal approach, he said “it is a path to be travelled by all Christians”: “The journey of synodality is and must be ecumenical”. This journey, the Pope affirmed, is not about creating something new but about welcoming the gift of unity already given to us by the Holy Spirit.
In 2025 we have entered into a new Era of Synodal journey. In his Teaching Spes non confundit the bull of indication of the ordinary jubilee of the year 2025, Pope Francis reminds us of the celebration of the 1700 year of the Council of Nicea ( AD 325). The Council of Nicaea sought to preserve the Church’s unity, which was seriously threatened by the denial of the full divinity of Jesus Christ and, hence, his consubstantiality with the Father. In the first centuries of Christianity, synods frequently took place in both East and West, showing the importance of ensuring the unity of God’s People and the faithful proclamation of the Gospel. All the baptized, with their respective charisms and ministries, are responsible for ensuring that manifold signs of hope bear witness to God’s presence in the world.
This commemoration provides a unique opportunity to reflect on and celebrate the common faith of Christians, as expressed in the Creed formulated during this Council, a faith that remains alive and fruitful in our days. In the post-apostolic time, the Church, having just emerged from hiding and persecution, was beginning to experience how difficult it was to share the same faith in the different cultural and political contexts of the time.
Although the Council of Nicaea decreed how the date of Easter should be calculated, subsequent divergences of interpretation led to the feast frequently being marked on different dates in East and West. To this day, different approaches to this question prevent celebrating the fundamental event of our faith on the same day. Providentially, a common celebration will take place in the year 2025.
In the context of these events, the Week of the Prayer for Christian Unity, celebrated from 2025 January 18-25, invites us to search out the deposit of our faith and understand its meaning for the restoration of Unity in the Church. Living the apostolic faith together today does not imply re-opening the theological controversies of that time, which have continued down the centuries, but rather a prayerful re-reading of the scriptural foundations and ecclesial experiences that led to that Council and its decisions. Pope Francis reminds us “We do well to remind ourselves that many people, unaware of the controversies of the past, fail to understand how divisions in this regard can continue to exist” (Spes non confundit).
Dr. Cherian Karukaparambil
