Faithful from many churches come together to worship in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Christians from multiple denominations gathered at the De Mazenod Chapel at Saint Paul University on Jan. 22, 2026, to worship together and mark the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

This year’s prayers and reflections were prepared by the Armenian Apostolic Church, along with their brothers and sisters of the Armenian Catholic and Evangelical Churches.

The Rev. Margo Whittaker, Anglican chaplain at the university, welcomed all those who gathered in the chapel, and the Rev. Canon Catherine Ascah, ecumenical officer for the diocese, offered prayers during the service.

The Rev. John Perkin of the First Baptist Church in Ottawa offered a homily drawing on the apostle Paul’s call for Christian unity in his letter to the Ephesians 4:1-13, begging the followers of Jesus to walk in a manner worthy of their calling “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love….There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling.”

Perkin said that during his four decades of ministry he had been privileged to preach in United, Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian and Pentecostal churches among others and had always found that “hope to which we are called” in all of those communities.

“We really need that sense of hope these days in our increasingly disordered, fragmented and even chaotic world.” But he added, “Hope is not a longing for things to be better. It is a process or working to make things better. Hope is not a state of mind. It is an activity. It is what we do to ensure that we are a light in the darkness of the world.”

Christians gather for worship and come to church needing different things at different times, Perkin said. Sometimes we are weighed down and in need of a word of comfort or consolation, a little bit of hope. We sometimes need mending and restoring. … Other times we are comfortable and need “a little push to be engaged…. We come as those in touch as the Celtic people say with the thin places of life, so that we can encounter God in our weakness, our hurts, our sorrows, and our struggles, and to connect with others in the world who are weak, hurting, sorrowful, or struggling. We come to be mended, restored, prepared, so that we can take on the world once more and offering it the hope that we are given. In this sense, the church is a refuge for the world.”

Photos: LA Williams