January 15, 2013: During the week of prayer for Church unity this year, Christians
around the world will say prayers that Indian students prepared.
Student Christian
Movement in India prepared the prayers and readings for the January 18-25 Week of
Prayer for Christian Unity. 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.
Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity jointly
sponsors the 15-year-old annual event with the World Council of Churches’ Faith and
Order Commission.
The week of prayer has its beginning in the late eighteenth
century and by 1890 both Catholic and Protestant leaders were recommending the time
between Ascension Day and Pentecost as a special season for prayer for unity.
Two
Anglican priests--Spencer Jones in England and Paul Wattson in the United States—founded
in 1908 the Week of Prayer, as we know it now. Their 'Church Unity Octave' hoped to
achieve reunion between the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church, and excluded
other denominations.
But in 1933 a Catholic priest from Lyon in France, Paul
Couturier, recast the Octave as the Week of Universal Prayer for the Unity of all
Christians. With the development of the World Council of Churches, the Faith and
Order movement, and the calling of the Second Vatican Council, the various strands
and movements of prayer for unity began themselves to come together.