We are off to St Paul's outside the walls later for catholic vespers with the pope, it's the end of the week of prayer for Christian unity. Mary one of our students is reading a prayer.
Well is was like evensong in Bristol/Salisbury cathedral. Full choir and sung evening prayer. Differences were that the Pope was leading it, it was in St Paul's Basilica outside the walls, on the day we celebrate the conversion of Paul .the Archbishop of Canterbury representative in rome was present was present, they really know how to swing incense AND we had VIP seats right at the front....oh and I almost forgot an escort home which avoided all the traffic, but it was by luck that the coach in front needed to get some delegates back quickly to continue a dialogue meeting and we just happened to be behind them!!
It was a beautiful service in Italian, but we had a book with the translation in English, I really felt I could enter into the spirit of worship, which I felt was lacking at the audience with the pope.
This was really the last key day of the trip I think, we wine to visit Vatican radio which, was a huge affair, we're not talking some little hospital radio set up, we're talking a business that is broadcast all over the world in 40 different languages.
Sunday was an interesting end to the week, it was a bit of an anticlimax really. The catholic church and especially the Pontificate Council for Promoting Christian Unity really worked hard for us all week, we met all manner of departments, we met communities involved in world ecumenical work, attended vespers with representatives from many Christian denominations, we were also taken to meet the Waldensians. But on the last morning we were invited to attend a Mass in a parish church with a lunch afterwards, it was a happy occasion with young church members receiving bibles as gifts, some of us were asked to help hand out the bibles with the Cardinal and others were asked to read, but when it came to communion, we couldn't receive and although I understand the reasons why, it seemed the wrong thing to end the week of Christian unity with. At Bossey we don't share communion services together, we are encouraged to go to churches and join theirs, but because we don't do communion, nobody is excluded. In this Catholic Church on this Sunday morning, I felt excluded....
And yet I was only justifying this to myself a few days before we came to Rome. We are united through Christ as one church in Christ, if we choose to practice rituals in different ways, and be many churches that make up the one church in Christ, does it really matter in the big scheme of things?
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