Many Calgary Catholics are pushing through the coldest week of the new year by holding onto fond memories of the Christmas past. Others in the city’s East Asian communities keep themselves warm by anticipating the opportunity to celebrate the Lunar New Year on Saturday, Jan. 25. Ditto for parishioners at other ethnic parishes in the Diocese, where being Catholic and Canadian means you can commemorate important secular events with festivities that include prayerful appreciation of the cultural traditions that moved to Canada with their families. 

Calgary’s Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese communities celebrate the Lunar New Year on the second new moon after the winter solstice. At St. Anne’s Korean Catholic Church in the community of Ramsay, parishioners will welcome the Lunar New Year with special prayers at the 11 a.m. mass on Sunday, Jan. 26, says parishioner and parish spokesman Nes (Luke) Noh. That service will be followed by a traditional New Year’s Day meal of rice cakes and soup in the parish hall. The rice cakes will come from a Korean market, the soup from parishioners. “We expect about 300 people,” says Noh. “No matter what the weather, people like to get together to celebrate. It’s tradition.”

Culturally, the Lunar New Year is also a good time to honour the memory of ancestors, so Korean Catholics will also offer prayers for their deceased family members, says Noh.

Week of Prayer about a shared faith

This year’s Lunar New Year falls at the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, says Theodoric Nowak, Director of Social Justice and Outreach Ministries with the Calgary Catholic Diocese. This year’s Week of Prayer, set for Jan. 18 to 25, calls for Christians to move from shared prayer to shared action. The theme also challenges Christians to show greater generosity to people in need. “In a Diocese as diverse as Calgary’s, it’s always important to remember the different backgrounds which people come from and the traditions they hold,” says Nowak. “The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity reminds us that despite the differences which exist between cultures and denominations, we find unity in our love of Christ and commitment to achieving the common good.” In addition to prayers for the faithful being offered for Christian Unity, the FCJ Centre and Ascension Parish will each host prayer events, adds Nowak.

By: Joy Gregory

Do we still need to pray for Christian Unity?

The annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity will begin  Saturday, Jan. 18.  In many countries, Christians will gather in one anothers’ churches to pray. Since the 1960s, prayers and readings for the week have been jointly planned by the Vatican and the World Council of Churches.

Christian unity was a chief goal of the Second Vatican Council and signified the lowering of barriers that caused pain within families, between spouses, and in the workplace. The significance of this ecumenical movement is not lost on Rev. Adrian Martens of the Roman Catholic Church and Anglican Archbishop Gregory Kerr-Wilson.

So, have we been successful in attaining Christian unity?

Archbishop Kerr-Wilson, Anglican diocesan bishop of Calgary and metropolitan of the ecclesiastical province of Rupert’s Land says there has been some success. There is a consensus that “we believe the same things. We have the same God. These similarities weren’t seen 50 or 60 years ago. However, the work is ongoing. Our goal should be to share at one table.”

Rev. Martens, Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs Coordinator in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Calgary says, “there have been wonderful strides and some dark periods in the history of Ecumenism. At times, we vary in our degree of Ecumenism. However, if we focus on being joined with Christ, other denominations will want to share much more.”
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So, while there seems to be some success in terms of dialogue and mutual understanding of other Christian denominations, has there been any tangible gains? 

Kerr-Wilson says “there have been many benefits to diverse Christian traditions. Different traditions have different strengths and emphasise different things. The Anglican Church went through several centuries with no Eucharist or mass unless you went to the early service for the most devout. The ecumenical relationship helped us to recover the benefit of seeing the Eucharist as the heart of Church worship. This is an example of receptive ecumenism, what we can receive from you that can deepen our own life in Church and faith in Christ. The gift of the other.”

“…We need to realise that the other’s gift is our gift as well,” says Martens.

In the eyes of both Kerr-Wilson and Martens, various Christian traditions and values from different areas and places around the world have helped the abundance of faith. 

Martens has seen a marked increase in the number of Christians from other countries. “There is also an increase in the number of Anabaptists, Hutterites and Mennonites.”

One aspect of this growth is the level of fluidity between denominations. Kerr-Wilson notes that “some Anglicans from different countries find that the way they worshiped is more similar to a different denomination here e.g., the Nigerian Anglican expression is similar to a Pentecostal church. There are some positive and hopeful aspects of this fluidity as well as some troubling things. The positive is that we see Christian faith in the other. The negative is that we are leaning towards consumerism, ‘if I am not happy with what is going on, I can move somewhere else.’ There isn’t that commitment to persevere in the midst of the struggle, which is an essential part of the discipleship.”

The looming question for Kerr-Wilson seems to be not whether we still need to pray for Christian unity, but rather, how can we act more together? 

“When we talk to each other, we need to recognize that we are not talking to a Catholic, Anglican or Presbyterian. We are talking to a brother in Christ, a sister in Christ. I have seen that when people engage in prayer and bible study together more regularly, that brings them closer together. I would love to see a monthly service where we gather as Christians to pray for others to come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. We should be fueled by our faith to act together on social justice initiatives.

Martens agrees that such joints actions will help remove barriers in families of mixed Christian denominations. “We can do more to make other denominations feel welcomed. Prayer is the best thing. We can lead the Prayer of the Faithful to pray for local churches.”

By Nadia Hinds

The story of St. Paul’s shipwreck on Malta from Acts 27:18 – 28:10 leads this year’s Prayer for Christian Unity. The diverse group of passengers on the boat were at the mercy of the force of the sea and the violent storm around them. They had lost of hope of being saved but an angel of God had come to St. Paul and assured him that God would grant them safety. Through his faith in God, St. Paul encouraged the group. When they ran aground, the people on the island embraced them with “unusual kindness” (Acts 28:2).
 
Hospitality
 The question to ask during this week of Christian unity is whether we show “unusual kindness” and become witnesses of God’s loving providence to all people.
 
Hospitality is a much needed virtue in our search for Christian unity. It is a practice that calls us to a greater generosity to those in need. Our own Christian unity will be discovered not only through showing hospitality to one another, important though this is, but also through loving encounters with those who do not share our language, culture or faith.
 
Prayer

The Week of prayer for Christian Unity takes place January 18 – 25.

• Each day prayerfully read a short portion of this Scriptural story.
• Consider what images strike you, what the text is saying to you.
• Respond to God’s word by praying for Christian Unity.
• Rest in God’s presence.
• Determine how you can turn your prayer into action as a missionary disciple.

 
January 18
Acts 27:18-19, 21
 
January 19
Acts 27:20
 
January 20
Acts 27:22, 34
 
January 21
Acts 27:23-26
 
January 22
Acts 27:33-36
 
January 23
Acts 28:1-27
 
January 24
Acts 28:3-6
 
January 25
Acts 28:8-10