This week’s service has been prepared by the brothers and sisters of the Community in Mehagne (Belgien).
Reflection text
Striving for Peace and Reconciliation
Excerpt from the « Charta Oecumenica » signed in Rome on November 5 2025, p. 18-19.
https://www.ccee.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/Charta-oecumenica-PDF-con-guideline-A4-final2.pdf
History demonstrates that war is ineffective at resolving controversies between nations. While non-violent solutions are always preferable, we recognize that we are sometimes confronted with the tragic reality of choosing between allowing violence to continue or using force to end it. As churches, we need to implore peace from God as His gift, acknowledging that peace also needs to be actively built day by day, through works of justice and love.
Peace is not just the absence of war. There is no true peace without fairness, truth, justice, and solidarity. That is why we affirm that war and violence are a defeat for humanity and that only in peace and through peace can respect for human dignity and its inalienable rights be guaranteed. We are converted to peace when we “beat swords into ploughshares” (Isa 2:4).
Christ teaches us to love our enemies (Mt 5:44). Our faith does not allow us to despair of adversaries. We do not equate those who err with their errors, and we do not lose hope for them. Reconciliation includes asking for forgiveness and offering it, as well as agreeing upon appropriate redress. Striving for peace and reconciliation means creating spaces where people of goodwill come together to be ready for sincere and ongoing dialogue, preparing the ground for fresh advances in justice towards the peaceful coexistence of all human beings.
Intercessions
To be adapted or modified according to the place and circumstance
In Brussels, the capital of Europe, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Churches live side by side, along with a hundred Evangelical Churches of diverse cultural origins. Several of them are engaged in projects of community life and houses of prayer.
We pray to you, Lord, to strengthen the spiritual renewal of all these Christian communities through listening, fraternal dialogue, the welcoming of the younger generation, and concern for the poor.May every Christian community in Belgium become a place where God works for unity.
Lord, send your Holy Spirit!
Beginning of November, a gathering was organized by CHARIS (the International Service for Catholic Charismatic Renewal) with Mary Healy, on the theme “Holy Spirit, give everything!” The participants were renewed in the Holy Spirit and in their desire to make God’s love known to all. During this weekend, many young people aged 18 to 35 came forward and they were prayed over by the brothers.
Lord, we bless you for these young people: grant them the grace to be your witnesses in our increasingly de-Christianized society.
We also pray for the young people of the Antwerp dormitory, run by the Chemin Neuf Community, and for all the young people journeying with us in Brussels and Liège.
Lord, send your Holy Spirit!
In recent weeks, Eastern Catholic churches have experienced significant events:
– On October 19, the Armenian Catholics celebrated the canonization of Ignatios Maloyan, one of their bishops, martyred in 1915 after exhorting his faithful to remain steadfast in the faith.
– And on November 15, the Romanian Greek-Catholics welcomed their new Major Archbishop, Claudiu-Lucian Pop, installed in Blaj by the prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches.
Lord, we ask you to continue to bless and guide our brothers and sisters of the East, so that their Churches may preserve the faith handed down to them by their ancestors.Lord, send your Holy Spirit!
The Pope’s visit to Turkey for the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea was an opportunity for an ecumenical prayer at the site of the archaeological excavations of the ancient basilica of Saint Neophytos.
Lord, rekindle today in each of our Churches the same Spirit that inspired the conciliar fathers of Nicaea – their desire “to express their faith while seeking what unites.”Lord, send your Holy Spirit!
Prayer for Christian unity
Lord Jesus, who prayed that we might all be one,
we pray to you for the unity of Christians,
according to your will,
according to your means.
May your Spirit enable us
to experience the suffering caused by division,
to see our sin
and to hope beyond all hope.
Amen.
(Prayer written by members of the Chemin Neuf Community
inspired by a prayer of Father Paul Couturier)
This week’s service has been prepared by the brothers and sisters of the Community at the Abbey of Notre Dame des Dombes
Reflection text
Extracts from text of the International Theological Commission “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour“
1700th anniversary of the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea 325 – 2025
Paragraphs 121 – 122
121. The celebration of the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea is a pressing invitation to the Church to rediscover the treasure entrusted to her and to draw from it so as to share it with joy, with a new impetus, indeed in a ‘new stage of evangelisation’.[ … ]
122. To proclaim Jesus our salvation on the basis of the faith expressed at Nicaea does not ignore the reality of humanity. It does not turn away from the sufferings and upheavals that plague the world and today seem to undermine all hope. On the contrary, it confronts these troubles by professing the only possible redemption, won by the one who experienced the violence of sin and rejection, the loneliness of abandonment and death, and who, from the very abyss of evil, rose to bring us too in his victory to the glory of the resurrection. This renewed proclamation does not ignore culture and cultures either, but on the contrary, here too with hope and charity listens to them and is enriched by them, invites them to purification and raises them up. Entering into such a hope obviously requires conversion, but first and foremost on the part of those who proclaim Jesus through their life and words, because conversion is a renewal of the mind according to the thought of Christ. Nicaea is the fruit of a transformation of thought that is both implied and made possible by the event of Jesus Christ. In the same way, a new stage of evangelisation will only be possible for those who allow themselves to be renewed by this event, by those who allow themselves to be seized by the glory of Christ, who is always new.
Intercessions
To be adapted or modified according to the place and circumstance
Pope Leo XIV is travelling from 27 November to Tuesday 2 December to Turkey and Lebanon for his first apostolic journey, which will be marked by ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. In Turkey he will make the journey that his weakened predecessor, Pope Francis, was not able to make. Together with Patriarch Bartholomew, they will celebrate the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in the same city that hosted the first ecumenical council in Christian history.
Lord, we entrust this meeting to you, may it be an opportunity to promote dialogue, concord and fraternity in the midst of the tumult of violence and war.
On 6 November 2025, an updated version of the European Ecumenical Charter was signed in Rome. This joint document of the Conference of European Churches (CEC) and the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE), elaborated and signed by six theologians including our sister Estelle Sogbou, aims to respond to contemporary challenges such as migration, climate justice, digitalisation and the role of young people in the churches.
Lord, we entrust to you all those Churches that are working together to meet the challenges of unity, peace and justice in Europe. May they be a source of creativity and a path of hope for our world today.
The community of Oriental Churches of the region of Bourg en Bresse and Grenoble will for the first time join in the preparation of the week of prayer for Christian unity in January 2026.
Lord, we entrust to you this beginning of a collaboration of the ecumenical team around the Abbey of Dombes with the Oriental Churches so that it may be a fruitful seed for the future of ecumenism in the region.
Prayer for Christian unity
Lord Jesus, who prayed that we might all be one,
we pray to you for the unity of Christians,
according to your will,
according to your means.
May your Spirit enable us
to experience the suffering caused by division,
to see our sin
and to hope beyond all hope.
Amen.
(Prayer written by members of the Chemin Neuf Community
inspired by a prayer of Father Paul Couturier)
This week’s service has been prepared by the brothers and sisters of the Community of Marseille.
Reflection text
Excerpt from the Address of His All Holiness Bartholomew I During the Mass at Our Lady of the Rosary of Lourdes Basilica on November 4th
Source : https://eglise.catholique.fr/conference-des-eveques-de-france/cef/assemblees-plenieres/assemblee-eveques-france-novembre-2025/567099-allocution-patriarche-bartholomee-eveques-lourdes/
The Eucumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was invited to address the Bishops’ Assembly of France gathered in Lourdes from November 4th to 9th, 2025
Each year in the month of January, we find ourselves in the week we call “The Prayer for Christian Unity.” The custom is beautiful; the sentiment is just. But is it sufficient? Do we risk creating a symbol among us, a moment where we convene once per year to remember the wound of the schism before going our separate ways as though it were nothing? These words might seem harsh, but it is frightening that sometimes these types of ceremonies do not have the intended result. They become a form of spiritual bureaucracy, a rite fulfilled to assuage the conscience rather than awaken the heart. And yet, prayer for unity cannot be a formality. It should rise up from our depths–like a cry, a supplication born from the pain of the Body of Christ murdered by the division of its members.
And what if each week of the year could be like this? And what if each Sunday, when we gathered in the same place for the breaking of the bread, it became not only the day of paschal joy, but also that of shared pain–the pain of division? When, standing in front of the holy altar, we cannot commune from the same chalice; it is not simply canonically illicit: it is a profound wound. It is a tragedy. It is the sign of a lack of love, a failure of our witness in the world. Here is the true reason for praying for unity: not the words prayed, but the silent suffering of each liturgy celebrated separately. When the schism no longer hurts, it is when we have ceased to love. And when we have ceased to love, it is when we have already died.
Intercessions
To be adapted or modified according to the place and circumstance
The ecumenical committee of Marseille has decided to organize a French-speaking Christian Forum in the next few years. The idea of this Forum arose in different countries through the Ecumenical Council of Churches and seeks to grow and deepen the relationships between brothers and sisters in Christ as well as between Churches which would never, hardly ever, or would have had very little chance of encountering each other.
Lord, we pray that at each phase of their preparation, the members of the community be inspired to forge relationships and invite leaders of Churches which do not usually encounter each other.
The next Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2026 will be prepared by an ecumenical group coordinated by the Armenian Apostolic Church. Christians will assemble at the American Apostolic Cathedral in Marseille for a filmed celebration that will be broadcasted on national television during the “Day of the Lord” program.
Lord, we entrust these meetings of preparation to you so that they may open our hearts to the reality of diversity of these Eastern Churches and grow our brotherly love and desire to receive the gift of unity among our Churches.
From November 27th to November 30th, Pope Leo XIV will travel to Turkey, where he will meet with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Iznik, formerly known as Nicea. “How could we celebrate the first council of the undivided Church now that we are divided?” Patriarch Bartholomew asked during his address in front of the assembly of bishops in Lourdes. He added further, “There, we will not celebrate a victory, but we will confess the wounds of our division”.
Lord, we entrust the Pope’s travel to you: may your work of reconciliation be furthered. May our Churches find the path of dialogue and peace. May this tireless work of dialogue and peace spill over into all of the world.
Prayer for Christian unity
Lord Jesus, who prayed that we might all be one,
we pray to you for the unity of Christians,
according to your will,
according to your means.
May your Spirit enable us
to experience the suffering caused by division,
to see our sin
and to hope beyond all hope.
Amen.
(Prayer written by members of the Chemin Neuf Community
inspired by a prayer of Father Paul Couturier)