(Except where noted, all materials are taken from https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/resources-for-the-week-of-prayer-for-christian-unity-2025 with adaptations of my own)

 

 

For this year, 2025, the prayers and reflections for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity were prepared by the brothers and sisters of the monastic community of Bose in northern Italy. This year marks the 1,700th anniversary of the first Christian Ecumenical Council, held in Nicaea, near Constantinople in 325 AD. This commemoration provides a unique opportunity to reflect on and celebrate the common faith of Christians, as expressed in the Creed formulated during this Council; a faith that remains alive and fruitful in our days. The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2025 offers an invitation to draw on this shared heritage and to enter more deeply into the faith that unites all Christians.

 

 

 

 

 

We bless you, O Lord, Father of lights:

from you descend every good thing and every perfect gift. R/

 

You have made the world and all that it contains,

you are the Lord of heaven and earth.

To all mortals you give life and breath and all things. R/

 

You created all the peoples that dwell on the earth.

For them you established the order of time and the boundaries of their space.

In the heart of human beings, you have placed the thought of eternity R/

 

Heavenly Father, according to your great goodness

you grant us a way of life through the Law and the Prophets.

Merciful Father, in Jesus, your Son, you proclaimed the good news of the kingdom. R/

 

God of all consolation,

call us to follow you.

Make firm for us the work of our hands. R/

 

 

Even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

 

 

You have searched me, Lord,

    and you know me.

 You know when I sit and when I rise;

    you perceive my thoughts from afar.

 You discern my going out and my lying down;

    you are familiar with all my ways.

For you created my inmost being;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

 

Search me, God, and know my heart;

    test me and know my anxious thoughts

^. and lead me in the way everlasting.

 

 

Behold the mysteries of love, and then you will contemplate the bosom of the Father, which the only-begotten Son of God has revealed. God himself is love, and through love he is contemplated by us. And while in his ineffable reality he is Father, in his compassion he has become for us mother.  (Clement of Alexandria)

 

What person can contemplate God with vigilant thought, and look upon his majesty, and consider his hidden nature, and can with the eye of his understanding look upon that pure and holy Nature, which has need of nothing? ... He who begs, and entreats, and urges every man to live. He who suffers to give us life, and seeks to find us, and is more pleased at our happiness than we ourselves. He who continually entreats us to take from his riches and to carry off wealth from his storehouse, that we may be rich through his treasures and not poverty-stricken. He who rejoices not so much for his own life as that we live.  (Philoxenus of Mabbug)

 

The Fountain of Life is that chief Good, from which the means of life are dispensed to all, while he has life abiding in himself. He receives from none as though he were in need. He confers good on others rather than borrows from others for himself, for he has no need of us ... What then can be more lovely than to approach him, to cleave to him? What pleasure can be greater? He who has seen and tasted freely of the Fountain of Living Water, what else can he desire. (Ambrose of Milan)

 

 

 

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,

         Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,

         And do run still, though still I do deplore?

                When thou hast done, thou hast not done,

                        For I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won

        Others to sin, and made my sin their door?

Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun

         A year or two, but wallow'd in, a score?

               When thou hast done, thou hast not done,

                        For I have more.

 

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun

         My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;

But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son

       Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;

                And, having done that, thou hast done;

                        I fear no more.

 

 

Father of compassion,

renew our faith in you and bind us together through your love,

so that we can recognise each other as your children,

and come together as one.

We praise you through Jesus Christ, your only-begotten Son,

in the communion of the Holy Spirit. Amen.