Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2018

As the Week of Prayer 2018 draws close, we recall that its founders were driven by a Catholic understanding of the Church's unity, and its need of re-integration and reconciliation. It is not a Protestant device, for its roots have grown alike through Protestant renewal movements, Catholic teaching on the Church and human society, and Orthodoxy too, towards an ecumenism that should serve none other than the visible and organic unity of Christ's people in His one Church. To this is integral both sharing in Catholic faith and living, and unity in communion with the Bishop of Rome as successor of Peter. Unity is never the missing piece of the jigsaw, the last step in the process: unity is where we have come from, just as it was prayed on the night before Our Lord died: a prayer, a command and a promise that we all be one, as the Father and the Son are one, so that the world may be convinced that Christ was sent so that the world might believe and live in hope.

Please look at our websites that tell the story of Prayer for Christian Unity.

• www.weekofprayerforchristianunity.org.uk gives the history, the movements, the people and the resources that continue the work
• www.paulcouturier.org.uk, tells the story of the remarkable Fr Paul Couturier, who re-founded the Church Unity Octave to enable all Christians (indeed all people) to share in the Catholic Church's prayer for unity, to live by spiritual ecumenism, and to hope for the reintegration of the whole Church in one people of God
• www.seedofthechurch.org.uk, our work over many years to honour the martyrs on all sides of the Church's divisions, as witnesses to reconciliation in Christ not only in their own pursuit of faithfulness, but also in the fruit of repentance, new memory, and reconciliation for today and the future.

Also, here is the link to our annual prayer sheet, based on the writings of Paul Couturier, promoting closeness in personal prayer and repentance towards unity, which can also be used in services in Church, especially at the Prayer of the Faithful:

PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-Wdhsjnfa6eOWc1cFdrYUlVXzg/view?usp=sharing

Word: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-Wdhsjnfa6eZXV4aV9TV1pPbTg/view?usp=sharing