That All May Be One / Fr. Rick Ginther
Creed’s anniversary, date of Easter offer hope for coming together in jubilee
“Pilgrims of Hope.” In his documents about the Jubilee Year 2025, Pope Francis names all believers as pilgrims. He urges that believers be about prayer, pilgrimage and renewal.
The Holy Father wants this jubilee year to be an active one for and by those who believe in Christ. We who so believe are invited to be pilgrims living, sharing and spreading hope.
This year offers jubilee activities in Rome, across the United States, and here within the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. For an excellent resource about them, go to www.archindy.org/jubilee.
As we mark the jubilee, the Church this month also observed the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity on Jan. 18-25, a week rooted in “hope, … that all maybe one.”
A hope-filled celebration at Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ Church in Indianapolis on Jan. 19 focused on the
Nicene Creed, because the Council of Nicaea happened 1,700 years ago in 325. This council gave us the first creed for the entire universal Church.
The creed was reaffirmed in 381 at the Council of Constantinople, and in 431 at the Council of Ephesus, the latter of which also affirmed the title of “theotokos” (“God-bearer”) for Mary.
During the ensuing centuries, controversies both in the east and in the west threatened the acceptance of the creed by the entire Church.
One such controversy centered upon the noting in the creed that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father “and the Son” (“filioque” in Latin). This term, added at some regional councils in the west, was unacceptable in the east.
The tensions became divisive when the Church of Rome added this phrase to the creed in the 11th century.
According to a canon of the Council of Ephesus, the ecumenically approved creed was not to be altered except through an ecumenical council.
Thus, the year 1054 witnessed mutual excommunications by Church leaders in the east and west. Bitter distance ensued, and in some ways, yet remains.
Various theological, political, linguistic and Church discipline factors also contributed to divisions in the Church.
About 900 years later, during the Second Vatican Council,
Pope Paul VI and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople issued the Catholic-Orthodox Joint Declaration of 1965. At the same time, they lifted the mutual excommunications dating from the 11th century. The act did not result, however, in the restoration of communion.
On June 28, 2024, in an address to the annual visit of the delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople for the patronal feast of SS. Peter and Paul, Pope Francis stated that “it is my hope that the commemoration of the [1,700th anniversary of Nicaea] will inspire all believers in Christ the Lord to testify together to their faith and their desire for greater communion.
“In particular, I am pleased that the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity have begun to reflect on how to join in commemorating this anniversary, and I thank His Holiness Bartholomew [of Constantinople] for inviting me to celebrate it near the place where the council met. It is a trip that I truly wish to make.”
Both Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew have stated their hope that the date of Easter this year for both east and west (on April 20) will be the impetus for an agreed upon common date for Easter moving forward.
One can only hope!
(Father Rick Ginther is director of the archdiocesan Office of Ecumenism and Interreligious Affairs. He is also the pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Indianapolis.) †