One Household of Faith
We spoke last time of Paul’s missionary journeys. He traveled the shoreline of the Mediterranean Sea. In his day, this was the known world, Columbus having not yet set sail for North America.
The Greek word for “the inhabited world” is the word oikoumenikos. It comes from oikos which means house, or habitation. The word refers to the whole, then. It means the whole household.
You may not think you have ever heard this word before, but I’m sure you have heard the English word that derives from it: ecumenical. This word refers to the whole Church, the whole household of faith, the Church in its wholeness.
When the second Vatican Council read the sign of the times, it issued a Decree on Ecumenism. In it, the Council recognized that Christ has been “rousing divided Christians to remorse over their divisions and to a longing for unity. This movement toward unity is called ‘ecumenical.’”
The Roman Catholic Church thus pledged herself to ecumenism at Vatican II, and this was on Pope Benedict XVI’s mind when he declared the year of St. Paul.
In 2007 the Holy Father announced his intention to declare such a year. He did so in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. He said, “There is one particular aspect to which special attention must be paid during the celebration of the various moments of the 200th Pauline anniversary. I am referring to the ecumenical dimension. The Apostle to the Gentiles, who was especially committed to taking the Good News to all peoples, left no stones unturned for unity and harmony among all Christians."
The division which afflicted the Church of the first decades was a division between Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian. Paul is missionary to the Gentiles. Peter is overseer of the Church in Jerusalem. Their meeting and holy embrace is a symbol of the union of these parts of the Church.
So in 2008 the Holy Father mentioned this again when he initiated the year of St Paul. In a homily on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul he spoke of the shared desire by Peter and Paul to unify the Church of Jews and pagans. They worked together.
Paul writes in Galatians 2, “I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised [pagans], just as Peter to the circumcised [Jews], for the one who worked in Peter for an apostolate to the circumcised worked also in me for the Gentiles.” Who is that one working in both Peter and Paul? It is Christ, of course.
So it is significant that both apostles were martyred in Rome. Rome was a universal city. It was representative of the peoples of the world. It was an ecumenical city. The oikos (house) for all.
Pope Benedict says that when Peter journeyed to Rome, it was for the task of creating the unity of the one Church. And when Paul journeyed to Rome, it was out of the desire to make the Church catholic, universal.
The divisions which scar the body of Christ must be healed so that full witness can be given to the world. That will require the unity of Christ, an interior unity which comes from God. And protecting that, says the Pope, “is the permanent mission of Peter, as well as the special task entrusted to the Church of Rome.”
