"...When brothers and sisters who are not in perfect communion with one another come together to pray, the Second Vatican Council defines their prayer as the soul of the whole ecumenical movement. This prayer is 'a very effective means of petitioning for the grace of unity,' 'a genuine expression of the ties which even now bind Catholics to their separated brethren...'

"Along the ecumenical path to unity, pride of place certainly belongs to common prayer, the prayerful union of those who gather together around Christ himself. If Christians, despite their divisions, can grow every more united in common prayer around Christ, they will grow in the awareness of how little divides them in comparison to what unites them. If they meet more often and more regularly before Christ in prayer, they will be able to gain the courage to face all the painful human reality of their divisions, and they will find themselves together once more in that community of the Church which Christ constantly builds up in the Holy Spirit, in spite of all weaknesses and human limitations."

_{--John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint: Encyclical Letter on Commitment to Ecumenism, Vatican City, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1995, 27-29. [As reprinted in Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope, eds., The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices, WCC (Geneva) and Eerdmans (Grand Rapids), 1997, 523-524.]}

_{"I once asked a solitary contemplative to tell me a little about her life. At the time she was living in the woods in California. Her day started at 2 a.m., and she said she prayed for me. Well, well--here I was being prayed for at 2 a.m. in the morning, in the woods in California and I thought: 'What chance does the South African government stand?'"}

_{--Desmond Tutu, in On the Way to Fuller Koinonia: Official Report, Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order, eds. Thomas F. Best and Gunther Gassmann, Geneva, WCC, 1994, 100. [As reprinted in Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope, eds., The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices, WCC (Geneva) and Eerdmans (Grand Rapids), 1997, 525.]}

To share in praying for the ecumenical movement and the member church bodies of the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, use the Ecumenical Prayer Calendar.

To pray systematically for the people and churches of all the countries of the world, use the Ecumenical Prayer Cycle of the World Council of Churches by visiting www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/news/01-02.html.

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