Week of Prayer for Christian Unity — January 18-25, 2021: Abide in my love and you shall bear much fruit (cf. Jn 15:5-9)

Jan 15, 2021

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in 2021 was prepared by the Monastic Community of Grandchamp. The theme that was chosen,“Abide in my love and you shall bear much fruit,” is based on John 15:1-17 and expresses Grandchamp Community’s vocation to prayer, reconciliation and unity in the church and the human family.

In the 1930s a number of Reformed women from French-speaking Switzerland who belonged to a group known as the “Ladies of Morges” rediscovered the importance of silence in listening to the Word of God. At the same time they revived the practice of spiritual retreats to nourish their  life of faith, inspired by the example of Christ who went apart to a lonely place to pray. They were soon joined by others who took part in regularly organized retreats in Grandchamp, a small hamlet near the shores of Lake Neuchâtel. It became necessary to provide a permanent presence of prayer and welcome for the growing number of guests and retreatants.

Today the community has fifty sisters, all from different generations, Church traditions, countries and continents. In their diversity the sisters are a living parable of communion. They remain faithful to a life of prayer, life in community and the welcoming of guests. The sisters share the grace of  their monastic life with visitors and volunteers who go to Grandchamp for a time of retreat, silence, healing or in search of meaning.

The first sisters experienced the pain of division between the Christian churches. In this struggle they were encouraged by their friendship with Abbé Paul Couturier, a pioneer of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Therefore, from its earliest beginnings prayer for Christian unity was at the heart of the life of the community.

This commitment, together with Grandchamp’s fidelity to the three pillars of  prayer, community life and hospitality, forms the foundations of these materials.

To abide in God’s love is to be reconciled with oneself
The French words for monk and nun (moine/moniale) come from the Greek μ?νος which means alone and one. Our hearts, bodies and minds, far from being one, are often scattered, being pulled in several directions. The monk or nun desires to be one in his or her self and united with Christ. “Abide in me as I abide in you,” Jesus tells us (Jn 15:4a). An integrated life presupposes a path of self-acceptance, of reconciliation with our personal and inherited histories.

Jesus said to the disciples, “abide in my love” (Jn 15:9). He abides in the love of the Father (Jn 15:10) and desires nothing other than to share this love with us: “I have called you friends, because I have made known  to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (Jn 15:15b). Grafted into the vine, which is Jesus himself, the Father becomes the vinedresser who prunes us to make us grow. This describes what happens in prayer. The Father is the centre of our lives, who centres our lives. He prunes us and makes us whole, and whole human beings give glory to the Father.

Abiding in Christ is an inner attitude that takes root in us over time. It demands space to grow. It can be overtaken by the struggle for the necessities of life and it is threatened by the distractions, noise, activity and the challenges of life. In the turmoil of Europe in 1938, Geneviève Micheli, who would later become Mother Geneviève, the first mother  of the community, wrote these lines which remain relevant today:

We live in a time that is both troubling and magnificent, a dangerous time where nothing preserves the soul, where rapid and wholly human achievements seem to sweep beings away ... I think that our civilisation will die in this collective madness of noise and speed, where no being can think …

We Christians, who know the full value of a spiritual life, have an immense responsibility and must realise it, unite and help each other create forces of calmness, refuges of peace, vital centres where the silence of people calls on the creative word of God. It is a question of life and death.

Abiding in Christ, the source of all love, the fruit of communion grows
Communion with Christ demands communion with others. Dorotheus of Gaza, a monk in Palestine in the sixth century, expressed this in the following way;

Imagine a circle drawn on the ground, that is, a line drawn in a circle with a compass, and a centre. Imagine that the circle is the world, the centre is God, and the radii are the different paths or ways people live. When the saints, desiring to draw near to God, walk toward the middle of the circle, to the extent that they penetrate its interior, they draw closer to each other; and the closer they draw to each other, the closer they come to God. Understand that the same thing applies conversely,  when we turn away from God and withdraw toward the outside. It then becomes obvious that the more we move away from God, the more we move away from each other, and the more we move away from each other, the more we also move away from God.

Moving closer to others, living together in community with others, sometimes people very different from ourselves, can be challenging. The sisters of Grandchamp know this challenge and for them the teaching of Brother Roger of Taizé is very helpful:

“There is no friendship without purifying suffering. There is no love of one’s neighbour without the cross. The cross alone allows us to know  the unfathomable depth of love.”

Divisions among Christians, moving away from one another, are a scandal because they also imply moving further away from God. Many Christians, moved to sorrow by this situation, pray fervently to God for the restoration of the unity for which Jesus prayed. Christ’s prayer for unity is an invitation to turn back to him and so come closer to one another, rejoicing in the richness of our diversity.

As we learn from community life, efforts at reconciliation are costly and demand sacrifice. We are sustained by the prayer of Christ, who desires that we might be one, as he is one with the Father, so that the world may believe (cf. Jn 17:21).

Abiding in Christ until we bear fruit
“My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit” (Jn 15:8). We cannot bear fruit on our own. We cannot bear fruit separated from the vine. It is the sap, the life of Jesus flowing through us, that produces fruit. Remaining in Jesus’s love, remaining a branch of the vine, is what allows his life to flow through us.

When we listen to Jesus his life flows through us. Jesus invites us to let his word abide in us (John 15:7) and then whatever we ask will be done for us. By his Word we bear fruit. As persons, as a community, as the entire Church, we wish to unite ourselves to Christ in order to keep his commandment of loving one another as He has loved us (Jn 15:12).

Abiding in Christ the fruit of solidarity and witness grows
Though we, as Christians, abide in the love of Christ, we also live in a creation that groans as it waits to be set free (Rom 8). In the world we witness the evils of suffering and conflict. Through solidarity with those who suffer, we allow the love of Christ to flow through us. The paschal mystery bears fruit in us when we offer love to our brothers and sisters and nurture hope in the world.

Spirituality and solidarity are inseparably linked. Abiding in Christ, we receive the strength and wisdom to act against structures of injustice and oppression, to fully recognise  ourselves as brothers and sisters in humanity, and to be creators of a new way of living, with respect for and in communion with all of creation. The summary of the rule of life that the sisters of Grandchamp recite together each morning begins with the words “pray and work that God may reign”. Prayer and everyday life are not two separate realities but are meant to be united. All that we experience is meant to become an encounter with God.

For the eight days of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in 2021, we propose a journey of prayer:

Day 1: Called by God: “You did not choose me but I chose you” (Jn 15:16a) 
Day 2:
Maturing internally: “Abide in me as I abide in you” (Jn 15:4a)
Day 3: Forming one body: “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12b)
Day 4: Praying together: “I do not call you servants any longer … but I have called you friends” (Jn 15:15)
Day 5: Letting oneself be transformed by the Word: “You have already been pruned by the word…” (Jn 15:3)
Day 6: Welcoming others: “Go and bear fruit, fruit that will last” (Jn 15:16b)
Day 7: Growing in unity: “I am the vine, you are the branches” (Jn 15:5a) 
Day 8: Reconciling with all of creation: “So that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (Jn 15:11)

Source: https://www.oikoumene.org/