To the Editor:
Thank you very much, Father Ron Rolheiser, for the letter to the bishops and for all your efforts to promote ecumenism.
I would like to extend the prayers for Christian leaders to leaders of other traditions, also. And not just for the leaders but for their followers, too. This could be an example of the spiritual evolution of which you have written. We often see others as our enemies. And they see us the same way. Yet Jesus explicitly told us to love our enemies and to pray for them.
We can go even further. There is a great deal of turmoil over who may or may not receive the Eucharist. This is true in other denominations as well, but our concern is with our own conduct. Tell me, when Jesus fed the 5,000, did he first check on their orthodoxy? Did he require that each person must be in complete agreement with everything he said before he fed them? In fact did he ever check on anyone’s orthodoxy? Did he ever exclude anyone from sharing a table with him?
Yes, we should pray for the leaders and followers of other denominations and of other traditions. But perhaps most of all we need to pray for our own leaders and their followers.
Virginia Norton
Daven
