The 2017 prayer service for Christian unity
Bishop Larry Silva is inviting the leaders of Catholic, Eastern rite, Protestant, Orthodox and other Christian churches to an hour of hymns, Scripture and prayer at the ecumenical Taize service in observance of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 7 p.m., Jan. 24, at the Newman Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Parking is available with a pass at the campus of the former St. Francis School, 2707 Pamoa Road, Honolulu. Contact Alofa Leasiolagi, assistant manager at Newman Center, at 988-6222 for a parking pass.
This will be the seventh straight year the Newman Center, the hub of the university’s Catholic campus ministry, will host the annual prayer. The service is open to the public.
This year’s theme, taken from Acts 28:2, is “They showed us unusual kindness.”
Taize is the name of an ecumenical community of Catholics and Protestants in its namesake town of France. The Taize “prayer around the cross,” which will be incorporated in the service, lasts about an hour and includes chants, prayers, petitions, Scripture readings and periods of meditative silence.
Participants also have the opportunity to kneel and bow around a large iconographic cross displayed flat about a foot off the floor, to pray for their own personal intentions, for persecuted Christians and for healing of divisions among Christian denominations.
Before the Newman Center adopted the service, different Christian churches on Oahu took turns hosting the event. The Newman Center also hosts a Taize cross prayer service on Good Friday.
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was started in 1908 by the Graymoor Ecumenical and Interreligious Institute. Pope Pius X gave his blessing to the prayer week and Pope Benedict XV in 1916 extended its observance to the universal church.
The “octave” of prayer runs from the Feast of St. Peter’s Chair on Jan. 18 to the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on Jan. 25.
For more information about the Jan. 24 prayer service, contact Deacon Modesto Cordero at the diocesan Office of Worship, 585-3342, or mcordero@rcchawaii.org. Or call the Newman Center at 988-6222.