8va of Prayer
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O-DAY BEGINS The Octave (8va) of Prayer for Christian Unity.I make no bones about the fact that originally this was a Roman Catholic devotion praying for the return of all the Church to union with the See of Peter. I make no bones because it has grown to a full-on pan-Christian prayer: nearly every communion prays this octave officially: the Romans, the Anglicans, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans... all of them except their looney fringes.
All of them, that is, except the Orthodox.
Lord have mercy.
Forgive us, our Brothers and Sisters.
COMMENTS
Sorry... you misunderstand me - perhaps willingly.
Okay...I'll confess it...
Some Baptist churches join in...IF WE REMEMBER.
Yeah, sometimes we forget that the rest of you people even exist.
;-)
I don't think I misunderstand you. Aren't you saying a bunch of other churches pray the prayer to which you linked, but the Orthodox do not? And aren't you saying, "Forgive us for not praying the prayer, too"?
Did you mean something else?
No, I did not. Maybe I misread your meaning: which I understood to be every night we pray that they would come around and join the same institution we did. I still take "lead us to the unity of the faith" to mean the Orthodox are not 100% right yet. We may be wrong and we may need to change to let more Christian in to fellowship.
We pray for unity every night. And the invitation for others to join us has been offered repeatedly. Some, such as you and I, respond to the invitiation. But as the evening prayers indcate, the Faith is one. We, individual sinners are the problem. We need to attain the "unity of the faith".