On Saturday, 31 May, Bishop Earl Boyea and Archbishop Alexander (Golitzin), of the Bulgarian Orthodox Diocese of Toledo, pictured above, gathered with clergy and lay faithful from Catholic and Orthodox churches at Saint Matthew in Flint to recall the 1700th Anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in AD 325, writes Father Anthony Strouse, Pastor of Saint Matthew, June 3.
There was music from both Catholic and Orthodox traditions, a reflection from Bishop Boyea and Archbishop Alexander about the meaning and importance of Nicaea I, the recitation of the Our Father in Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and English, and then a common recitation of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (minus the Filioque) by all present.
Clergy and laity alike found the event a beautiful expression of our common Christian heritage for the first 1,000 years of Christianity.
As both Bishop Boyea and Archbishop Alexander pointed out, Nicaea I was convened to clarify our belief about Jesus Christ. This unity of belief helped unite in faith an empire that spoke various language (Greek in the East and Latin in the West). And the celebration on the last Saturday of May 1700 years later supported the work towards unity of East and West.
Pope Saint John Paul II, in his 1995 Encyclical Ut Unum Sint said, “the Church must breathe with her two lungs!”, meaning East and West. Hopefully this shared celebration will bring us closer to Jesus’ pray at the Last Supper: Ut unum sint, that they may be one.
