India sets table for Christian unity week

This year Christians around the world are being asked to learn about unity from India.

Prayers and readings for the Jan. 18-25 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity were prepared by members of the Student Christian Movement in India. Each year the writing team for the ecumenical event comes from a different country. In 2014 Canadians will choose the readings and make Bible and liturgy suggestions.

The 105-year-old annual event is jointly sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Commission.

For India’s tiny Christian minority, less than 2.5 per cent of India’s 1.2 billion people, unity has become more than an ideal. It’s a real, immediate need, said singer and sitar player Chris Dircan Hale.

“They’ve faced opposition and persecution. That has brought people together,” Hale told The Catholic Register.

“People really have suffered. This is a good time to think about Christian unity.”

The biblical passage that anchors this year’s octave of prayer is Micah 6:6-8, which urges people to “do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.”

For most Indians — Catholic, Protestant, Hindu and Muslim — the basis for unity is the family, said St. Thomas the Apostle parishioner Robert Matthew.

“If you ask me what is one thing that’s different from North America, it’s family. Family is very important,” said Matthew.

Prayers, Bible study guides and more can be downloaded from www.weekofprayer.ca.