Monday, March 15, 2010

Visiting Lutheran parish, pope says sin is root of Christian divisions

Human sinfulness has fractured the unity that should mark the Christian community, so Christians have a responsibility to work and pray to heal their divisions, Pope Benedict XVI said during a visit to a German Lutheran church in Rome.

"A Christian cannot live and be fully Christian without community, but we must recognize that we have destroyed this 'us,' we have divided the one path into many paths and, in that way, we have harmed our witness," the pope said March 14 during a prayer service in German.

The evening service took the form of a Liturgy of the Word with the Lutheran pastor, the Rev. Jens-Martin Kruse, preaching about the reading from Second Corinthians and Pope Benedict preaching about the Gospel passage from St. John.

Although he had a prepared text, Pope Benedict set it aside and instead picked up on themes Rev. Kruse had explored in his homily.

The Lutheran pastor spoke about the Gospel call to be joyful and hopeful even in the midst of a life often marked by divisions, trials and pain.

The most important element for living up to the call, he said, "is to be there for one another, to help each other carry our burdens."

"If we share with one another and share each other's burdens, it will make visible the faith we share," Rev. Kruse said.

During Pope Benedict's visit, his Lutheran hosts said they were still celebrating the 10th anniversary of the 1999 joint Roman Catholic-Lutheran statement on justification or how people are made righteous in the eyes of God, which was the key dispute of the Protestant Reformation.

They also remembered Pope John Paul II's visit to their parish in 1983.

The passage from the Gospel of John read during the liturgy included the parable of the grain of wheat that must die and Jesus' call to his disciples to be willing to give up their lives.

Pope Benedict said that when Jesus tells his disciples that the person who loves his life will lose it, but the one who loses his life will find it, "he wants to accent the fact that we cannot pretend that this life we are living belongs only to us, that I can be concerned only with having many things for myself."

"Those who live that kind of life will be lost. Life is not receiving, but giving," the pope said.

The Gospel passage, along with another in which Jesus says that those who want to follow him must serve others, is an affirmation of "the fundamental law of love, which teaches us that we are most ourselves when we love others and give ourselves to others," he said.

"This idea of following Jesus is something that can be done only together. We must learn this. We must give to each other, give ourselves to each other," he said.

The pope said he knows many people complain about the slow pace of ecumenism, but Christians should recognize the fact that they can come together to pray, to sing and to listen to the same word of God.

"The hope we have is that this unity might be even deeper," he said. "Certainly we must not be content with the ecumenism of the last few years, because we still cannot drink of the one chalice and we cannot be together around one altar.

"This must make us sad, because it is a sinful situation, but unity cannot be something we make ourselves," he said. "We must entrust ourselves to the Lord because only he can give us unity."

The pope ended his reflection by telling the Lutheran congregation, "Let us pray for one another; let us pray together that the Lord will make us one so that the world will believe."
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SIC: TP