10.10.2023
Porvoo Conference Explores Life in the Eucharist
Archbishop Michael Jackson is Anglican co–chair of the Porvoo Communion’s Contact Group. The group is currently meeting in Madrid. Here the Archbishop reports from the second day of the gathering.
Today the members of the Porvoo Communion met as the Porvoo Contact Group ahead of the Thematic Meeting on Life in the Eucharist.
We covered matters relating to transitivity of ministry along with plans for future meeting of the Porvoo Churches. The theme for next year is the environment and the conference will be held in Sigtuna in Sweden.
We were joined by members of the Church of the Faroe Islands where there are eighteen islands and a population of thirty thousand people. The other main traditions are Roman Catholic, Brethren and Pentecostal.
The afternoon included an explanatory tour of Madrid led by Bishop Carlos of Spain.
Holy Communion was celebrated in the cathedral with the archbishop of Dublin as preacher on the theme of the Conference.
“The Eucharist is primarily for those within the circle of faith. But their work is only begun once they receive the same Eucharist. They are to search constantly, to adapt the words of St Matthew 21, for the stones which the builders rejected. Add to this the words of 1 Peter 2.5: You also, as living stones, must be built up into a spiritual temple, and form a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. The Temple in Jerusalem is gone. The Romans have razed it to the ground. These regular church goers, in the volatile and intimidating circumstances of the early Roman Empire along the shores of the Black Sea, are to offer these spiritual sacrifices as a spiritual temple in their daily life. That is where they are to live and work in the Spirit; that is where they are to stand among their colleagues and neighbours, friends and enemies as the Risen Christ. This is the dynamic and the urgency of life in the Eucharist today as it was in the days of 1 Peter,” he stated.
You can read the full text of the Archbishop’s sermon here.
