The church must breathe with both lungs

[todaysdate]

By Matthew Sewell

“The one thing that the Catholic Church, ‘the Church which presides in charity,’ desires, and that I seek as Bishop of Rome, is communion with the Orthodox Churches.”

These words of Pope Francis from his recent visit to Turkey, paired with the frequently-uttered words of St. John Paul II in this article’s title, spells out clearly the goal of the Catholic Church with regard to her Orthodox brethren in the East.

The division between the East and West, between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, I admit, has been unknown to me until fairly recently. Even to the present moment, I still look at the split with an eye of curiosity as I try to understand it beyond the East’s cool hats and wondering why almost all orthodox bishops have awesome beards but few of our bishops out West sport them.

There obviously exists a divide between the two churches, because if there weren’t, you’d probably be watching cat videos on YouTube instead of reading this. It’s been nearly 1,000 years since the Great Schism began to take shape in 1054, and despite great leaps in fraternal bonding over the last 50 years by four popes and three Ecumenical Patriarchs, a lot of remaining damage still lingers thanks to our humanity and our sinful inclination. Division is a serious matter, spiritually speaking, and any hope for a reconciliation is sure to take a long time still.

And yet, in a certain sense I can see a child learning about all this in Sunday School, saying, “What’s the big deal?” and I would say he had a point. After all, St. John Paul wrote in 1995, months after meeting with the same Bartholomew I, whom Francis embraced two weeks ago, “We have almost everything in common; and above all, we have in common the true longing for unity.” (Orientale Lumen, 3)

Unity, after all, is what Jesus was striving for in his earthly ministry, and what he actively continues to desire for us today. Fr. Robert Barron, rector of Mundelein Seminary in Chicago and founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, wrote, in his book “The Priority of Christ,”

“We recall that one of the principal tasks of the Messiah was to gather the tribes of Israel and then, through them, to gather the nations of the world. What the Messiah opposes, therefore, is division.” (p. 87)

The division between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, though it may pale in comparison to other divisions within Christianity, is a division nonetheless. Origen, a Church Father writing in the 3rd Century, once said, “Ubi divisio, ibi peccatum” or “Where there is division, there is sin,” illustrating the vital connection between spiritual division, regardless of its size.

So, what is the big deal? Using St. John Paul’s metaphor of “breathing with both lungs,” the big deal could actually be answered by Pope Francis — just ask him how much more difficult it is to breath with one lung instead of two. To have nearly 300 million Eastern Orthodox brethren divided, in no matter how small a way, from the Roman Catholic Church, is a scourge that perpetually afflicts the body of Christ. As St. Paul said, “If [one] part suffers, all the parts suffer with it.” (1 Cor. 12:26a) We must continue to fight for unity.

The only way unity will ever be established, really the only way anything with our souls may ever be truly improved, is through prayer and through a radical surrender to the will of the Father. And so, let us pray that one day Christianity may be united once again, that we may one day again be able to worship Christ the King together, “in spirit and truth.” (Jn 4:24)