19.01.2015
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity: Let it Not Be for One Week Only – Preacher at Inaugural Service Says
‘The Well is Deep’ is the theme for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2015 which runs from January 18 to 25. The Inaugural Service took place in St Bartholomew’s Church, Clyde Road, Dublin 4, yesterday and was attended by a multitude of Christian church leaders, including Archbishop Michael Jackson and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.
Introducing the service, which is organised annually by the Dublin Council of Churches, Archbishop Michael Jackson explained that the theme had been chosen this year by the churches of Brazil and said it links the living water that Jesus refers to that flows through baptism and the challenge of ecology.
The address was given by Fr Damien McNeice, Master of Ceremonies to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and chairperson of Dublin Council of Churches. He said that this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity came at a time when we are on the cusp of many significant anniversaries when churches would find themselves working together for the healing of memories.
He suggested that people of all backgrounds and traditions would be “held in prayer” throughout this week but he said that it must become something more than just a week of prayer, which once past, people return to their own communities. “Let it not be, like a show or film in town, ‘for one week only’,” he commented.
Drawing on the Gospel reading (John 4: 1–42) when Jesus talks to the Samaritan Woman at the Well (from which ‘the Well is Deep’ theme is drawn), Fr McNeice explained that the Jews considered the Samaritans to be in schism with them but through Jesus going to Samaria, God gathered people who had been separated. He asked in 2015: who it is that God is calling us to gather? Who are the people on the peripheries of our lives? Where is our Samaria?
Photo caption: Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and Archbishop Michael Jackson during the inaugural service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2015 which took place in St Bartholomew’s Church, Clyde Road, Dublin 4 (Church of Ireland). Water was brought from the four corners of the church and poured into one vessel as a symbol of unity.
[More photographs from the service can be viewed on the Dublin and Glendalough Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DublinandGlendalough ]