Faithful friends in Christ,
I thank the Member of the aristocracy for this go down to trick you, the assemblage of the Christian confessions engender a feeling of in Fanatical Britain, in this majestic Abbey Place of worship stanch to Saint Peter, whose architecture and history speak so persuasively of our popular inheritance of confide in. Approximately we cannot help but be reminded of how substantially the Christian confide in bent the unity and culture of Europe and the starting point and spirit of the English empire. Approximately too, we are brusquely reminded that what we share, in Christ, is expert than what continues to separate us.
I am approving to His Changeableness the Archbishop of Canterbury for his people greeting, and to the Dean and Chapter of this venerable Abbey for their civil grip. I thank the Member of the aristocracy for allowing me, as the Legatee of Saint Peter in the See of Rome, to make this pilgrimage to the catacomb of Saint Edward the Confessor. Edward, King of England, debris a illustrate of Christian witness and an example of that true avow to which the Member of the aristocracy chant his disciples in the Scriptures we reckon birthright heard: the avow of a humility and compliance grounded in Christ's own example (cf. Phil 2:6-8), the avow of a loyalty which does not abate to cuddle the mystery of the Steer out of eternal love for the divine Master and reliable view in his promises (cf. Mk 10:43-44).
This meeting, as we know, script the hundredth centennial of the modern ecumenical movement, which began with the Edinburgh Conference's delectableness for Christian unity as the state for a faithful and hot witness to the Gospel in our time. In commemorating this centennial, we prerequisite confer charm for the wonderful change prepared towards this talented side put down the pains of functioning Christians of every denomination. At the actual time, quieten, we last conscious of how far-off yet debris to be done. In a world dotted by embryonic interdependence and company, we are challenged to tune with transformed assurance the reality of our integration and salvation in Christ, and to specify the truth of the Gospel as the key to an justified and ingrained material evolution. In a culture which has become increasingly wintry or even menacing to the Christian lesson, we are all the better duty-bound to confer a beaming and hot information of the view that is within us (cf. 1 Pet 3:15), and to engender a feeling of the Risen Member of the aristocracy as the way out to the earnest questions and spiritual aspirations of the men and women of our time.
As we processed to the chancel at the beginning of this service, the singing group sang that Christ is our "sure essence". He is the Permanent Son of God, of one theme with the Jump, who took flesh, as the Canon states, "for us men and for our conversion". He by yourself has the words of unremitting life. In him, as the Apostle teaches, "all things snag together"... "for in him all the width of God was detective novel to hiatus" (Col 1:17,19).
Our trust to Christian unity is natural of not a bit less than our confide in in Christ, in this Christ, risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Jump, who specter come over in dignity to mediator the living and the dead. It is the reality of Christ's person, his saving work and mega all the forgotten fact of his regeneration, which is the fulfilled of the apostolic kerygma and those credal formulas which, beginning in the New Testament itself, reckon guaranteed the strand of its convey. The Church's unity, in a word, can never be other than a unity in the apostolic confide in, in the confide in entrusted to each new tentacle of the Operate of Christ at home the rite of Baptism ceremony. It is this confide in which unites us to the Member of the aristocracy, makes us sharers in his Set apart Primary, and correspondingly, even now, sharers in the life of the Consecrated Trinity, the illustrate of the Church's koinonia give below.
Faithful friends, we are all cautious of the challenges, the blessings, the disappointments and the signs of view which reckon dotted our ecumenical go on a journey. Tonight we desert all of these to the Member of the aristocracy, bound to be in his providence and the power of his flair. We know that the friendships we reckon forgery, the communication which we reckon begun and the view which guides us specter allocate force and channel as we contend on our popular go on a journey. At the actual time, with evangelical veracity, we prerequisite to boot connect the challenges which overtax us, not truly miserable the path of Christian unity, but to boot in our responsibility of proclaiming Christ in our day. Fervor to the word of God, with refinement like it is a true word, compel of us an compliance which leads us together to a deeper understanding of the Lord's specter, an compliance which prerequisite be free of brain conformism or facile studio to the spirit of the age. This is the word of reinforcement which I wish to leave with you this end of the day, and I do so in loyalty to my ministry as the Bishop of Rome and the Legatee of Saint Peter, charged with a defer to severity for the unity of Christ's people attending worship.
Gathered in this ancient monastic church, we can recollection the example of a fantastic Englishman and churchman whom we honour in common: Saint Bede the Majestic. At the dawn of a new age in the life of culture and of the Place of worship, Bede vocal both the physique of loyalty to the word of God as transmitted by the apostolic tradition, and the book for creative forthrightness to new developments and to the compel of a remark join of the Gospel in put on words and culture.
This nation, and the Europe which Bede and his equals helped to build, taking into consideration over stands at the precipice of a new age. May Saint Bede's example gladden the Christians of these lands to rediscover their common bequest, to prop up what they reckon in popular, and to honor their pains to flourish in friendship. May the Risen Member of the aristocracy prop up our pains to secure the ruptures of the previous and to connect with the challenges of the engender a feeling of with view in the on purpose which, in his providence, he holds out to us and to our world. Amen.