Snowstorms made it impossible for Watson to travel to Ottawa as planned, so St. Bart’s parishioners and others in attendance gathered in the church hall to listen online.

Watson’s morning session was on historical friendships that have advanced ecumenism.

He began by mentioning some famous friendships such as the ones between St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare; St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross; and Trappist priest Thomas Merton and social justice and anti-war activist Dorothy Day.

Watson then shared the inspiring story of how a friendship helped heal a deep schism between the Eastern and Western Churches (later known as the Orthodox and Catholic churches). A dispute led to the leaders of the two branches of the church excommunicating one another in 1054 and a “deep freeze” of alienation that lasted for 900 years.

A shift happened when Pope Paul VI was elected in 1963 in the midst of the Second Vatican Council (which included a goal of fostering greater Christian unity.)  In the Orthodox Church, Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople was aware of the beginning of a “thaw” in Catholic attitudes towards other churches. He began a correspondence with Vatican leaders and eventually with Pope Paul himself.

In 1964, Pope Paul made a surprising pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He and Patriarch Athenagoras met, embraced and prayed together on the Mount of Olives in January 1964.

Later that year, Pope Paul returned a relic — the skull of St. Andrew — that had been in Rome to the Orthodox Church. (Andrew is the traditional patron of the Eastern Orthodox).

In December 1965, the Pope and Patriarch made an announcement that they were lifting and cancelling the excommunications imposed by their predecessors in 1054.

Patriarch Athenagoras commissioned this icon which depicts the embrace of the holy brothers — Andrew and Peter — as a gift for the Pope.

In 1975, Pope Paul met with Orthodox Archbishop Meliton. The pope knelt and kissed the Archbishop’s feet, in a gesture that was inspired by Christ washing the feet of his disciples.

Watson noted Jesus’s words to the apostle in John 15:14-15

“You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends.”

He concluded: “With friendship, ecumenism becomes something we long for and desire.”

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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

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In the meanwhile, we offer this excerpt from a speech Archbishop Stephen Cottrell of the Diocese of York delivered at Lambeth Palace on Nov. 18 after he returned from a visit to the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem. He offered some reflections on Christian unity and interfaith relations in the current global context:

“And if we allow the ideologies of hatred and separation, and the dehumanizing of one set of people, then what will this do to our own humanity, and who might we choose to turn on, and who will turn on us?  The tectonic plates are shifting, and there is a real danger that the values, standards and rights we have cherished will be eroded and overridden to our shame and detriment.

“In each of the holy sites I visited, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and of course at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, I was received with joyful and gracious hospitality, by Orthodox and Roman Catholic sisters and brothers alike. This is the spiritual and theological foundation upon which our vision for peace must be built: for as Christians, as we come closer to Christ, we also come closer to each other. We see the face of Christ in each other. Or if we find that too hard, see the face of others reflected in the eyes of Christ, who looks on each of us with the same steadfast, tender and compassionate gaze of love. For it is Jesus Christ himself who makes the hero of some of his most famous stories people of another faith: a good Samaritan, a Syro –Phoenician woman, a Roman centurion, and the one leper who comes back and says thank you is a Samaritan too. We must also, therefore, see and honour the image of God in our sisters and brothers of other faith communities.

“It is this theological vision which is what our world needs and is the greatest bulwark against the erosion of human rights and human dignity, which is the image of God and the face of Christ in every human person. This is the Christian vision, and the recovery of that vision in our social and political discourse can enable us, as those great women in Ramallah asked us, to hunger and search for justice and build peace in the land of the Holy One  – and in our own neighbourhoods as well, where we see an increase in antisemitism and Islamophobia and where we are less and less trusting of each other, and this threatens to tear us apart.

“I know our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters will have themes in their own traditions that seek to bring us together, not in a way that dissolves our difference of belief, but that recognizes we all need to flourish.”

Archbishop Cottrell’s entire speech describing his experiences during his visit to the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem at this difficult time can be read on his website.

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Prayers and reflections for 2025 were prepared by the brothers and sisters of the monastic community of Bose in northern Italy. And because 2025 is the 1700^th anniversary of the creation of Nicene Creed, the creed was a focus. The global theme chosen was a question “Do you believe this?” from John 11:26.

The Rev. Canon Catherine Ascah is the diocesan ecumenical officer and represents the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa on the Christian Council of the Capital Area. She participated in the service reading one of the lessons in French.

Dr. Murray Watson, a Catholic Biblical scholar, ecumenism activist and interfaith educator and adjunct professor at Huron University College in London, Ont., offered an inspiring reflection on that theme, which we share an excerpt from:

“There was a time when Christians could rely on mainstream Western society to generally support them in affirming their faith in Jesus’ incarnation, his suffering, death and resurrection. But those days, the days of worship, of church and society in cahoots with each other, are pretty much gone. And that is almost certainly for the best for all of us. But what is left is a bunch of people like us, who continue to recite this Nicene Creed 1,700 years later, who counter-culturally and almost defiantly continue to believe and put into practice what it says about God and humanity.

“And as this year’s 1700th anniversary reminds us, the fact that we can all affirm that creed is something both amazing and inspiring, especially if we know anything about the history of the theological infighting and feuding that went into its promulgation in 325.
But in a world like ours, it also reminds us that as members of Christ’s one family, we should not be, we cannot be, strangers to each other, worse yet, hostile to each other, or triumphalistically gloating over each other’s struggles.

“If that creed means anything, it’s that we belong to each other on a fundamental, intrinsic level. We believe, it says, in one baptism. And we are united by faith that we must believe and profess and live together. Denominational labels have their place, and there is no denying the painful histories of our past divisions over those 1700 years, but we are living through a different time today. And that time calls us to a common, loving, credible witness to this Jesus we say we believe in, not as competitors, not as strangers, not even really as friends, but more as members of a single, if fractured and imperfect, and highly dysfunctional family.

“There is no debating that it is not easy in our world to say, ‘Yes, I believe this. Yes, I believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, the Son of God and the saviour of the world. Yes, I believe that God’s love for us is more powerful than our selfishness, than our exclusions and our mistakes. Yes, I believe that God is still at work in this messed up world of ours, which He made, and which He loves.

“It sounds quaint to people. For some of us there are days that those words do not easily come tripping off our lips. It’s hard sometimes even to convince ourselves. The Easter triumph of Jesus is not as obvious in this world as we would prefer it to be. But in a culture where believing, and believing publicly, is increasingly challenging, ecumenism becomes even more important.

“We have always needed each other, but perhaps today we need each other more than ever before, not because we want to rebuild that Christendom and retake the levers of power in society, but because we can support each other in believing. We can reassure each other in believing. We can strengthen each other in believing. When believing is difficult, the power of our Christian community together is more important than ever, and denominational labels seem less and less significant.

“We have seen that phenomenon over and over again in totalitarian settings, where Christians of different denominations and churches have borne witness side by side, have suffered together and died together for a faith they shared. But they have also lived together. … I think of the broad ecumenical coalitions that came together to support the march for Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights era. I think of the ecumenical coalitions we have here in Canada, like Kairos, who have been working for decades on environmental protection, justice for Indigenous peoples, international development, poverty reduction. I think of the Christians who even today come together in the wake of natural disaster and tragedy to stand hand in hand with other people of faith to meet concrete needs and be signs of solidarity and hope when they are faced with darkness.”

Music was a highlight of the service in beautiful hymns sung by a joint choir from Kanata United Church and the Ottawa Mennonite Church and led by choir conductor Eric Rupp and Nicholas Busch. Solos by cellist William Voth opened and closed the service.

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The Rev. David Sherwin of the United Church, president of the Christian Council of the Capital Area (CCCA) welcomed all attending from various Christian denominations and thanked Father Anthony Mourad, the clergy and parishioners of St. George and St. Anthony for their warm welcome.

The congregation then enjoyed a liturgy enriched with beautiful Coptic music and chanting.

Anglicans were among the clergy participating in the service. The Rev. Chung Yan Lam, who is an ordained Lutheran priest serving as associate incumbent in the Anglican parish of All Saints is vice-president of the CCCA and helped organize this year’s events. Archdeacon Linda Hill read one of the lessons, and the Rev. Dr. Canon Peter John Hobbs delivered a homily centred on the gospel reading for the day from Luke 10:25-37, the parable of the good Samaritan.

Hobbs began by saying that his own experiences of seeking Christian unity “which I suspect is like that of many other Christians in our local context, is informal,” and takes place in conversations with family, friends, colleagues. “What strikes me in these informal, implicitly ecumenical relationships is that after a brief discussion of doctrine and differences, we very quickly find unity in the mission of the Church, the mission of God, the body of Christ, in the values of compassion and mercy at the heart of the gospel, and the practice of service and hospitality,” he said. “The foundation of our unity is our shared service to the world God loves.”

He described his professional ministry as director general of the Community Ministries of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa. “This work is rooted in a much broader sector, that part of the social service sector which strives to address the most vulnerable in our midst, often around issues of homelessness, poverty, trauma, addiction, and mental illness. It is a sector marked by partnerships, collaboration, with people from all walks of life, from all backgrounds, striving to address human suffering.”

In this diverse interfaith pluralistic milieu, Hobbs said he meets a lot of Christians from all sorts of denominational backgrounds. “No surprise, given our core values and faith in Christ. The Christian unity we discover in service, grounded in compassion and mercy, also brings us into relationship with those of other faiths and backgrounds.”

Drawing the parallel to the gospel reading about the good Samaritan, he said, “Our differences fall away when we are moved by compassion, when we show mercy, when we stop abruptly on our way to address the suffering of another who is right in front of us.”

Now, there is a great need for all Christians and people of faith to work together to help the many in need. “The city of Ottawa is facing a profound crisis, not unlike many other communities in our country,” Hobbs said. “When one walks across many parts of our city, the evidence of homelessness and poverty is striking—people hanging out in the streets, sleeping, openly using drugs, making encampments across our cities, in churchyards, underpasses, parks, walkways, doorways. Increasingly more and more people have fallen into desperate situations.”

He noted that in Ottawa, the number of newcomers seeking shelter increased by 165% in 2023 and many refugee claimants and asylum seekers find themselves without resources or places to stay.  “For the first time, there is not enough shelter space to accommodate everyone looking for a bed or a mat to lay their head. It is a struggle to manage the influx of vulnerable people, shelters and social service agencies are overwhelmed.

“The incidence of drug overdoses is on an exponential rise as toxic, deadly drugs are hitting the streets. People are dying. We are struggling to keep people alive for just another day.

Frontline staff administer on a daily basis Naloxone to people who have overdosed, each day, saving lives,” he added. 

He noted that many Christians, as individuals and congregations, are already engaged in work help the most vulnerable and have been for a long time.  

For those asking,  “What can we do? Hobbs had this advice: 

“Homelessness is a failure of public policy, and it starts with affordable housing and well-resourced support services. We need to advocate, in no uncertain terms, that truth. …

“We can learn, we can proclaim, we can advocate, and we can serve. We serve in many different ways, as leaders, donors, joining committees, sitting on boards, as frontline workers and volunteers, we can serve as congregations and individuals….There will be no shortage of opportunities to serve, so give of yourself. Follow the invitation of Jesus, who in reference to the Samaritan said, Go and do like this…..Our unity, our hope, is in our shared compassion.”

The parish of St. George and St. Anthony has a special focus on helping youth, particularly youth affected by life on the street, and donations from the service were dedicated to that work.

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