{"id":18617,"date":"2013-07-12T07:00:24","date_gmt":"2013-07-12T14:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=18617"},"modified":"2015-03-19T16:33:39","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T23:33:39","slug":"my-great-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2013\/07\/12\/my-great-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"My great hope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I first heard that Jorge Bergoglio had been declared Pope, I immediately looked him up on my <a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.logos.androidconclave\" target=\"_blank\">Conclave Android app<\/a> and my eyes were quickly drawn to the sentence which said that in Argentina\u00a0he had been the Ordinary for Eastern-rite Catholics without an Ordinary of their own rite.<\/p>\n<p>I was hopeful that, given this background, his pontificate would be particularly sensitive to the the Christian East. I have not been disappointed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/FrancisBartholomew.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/FrancisBartholomew.jpg\" alt=\"FrancisBartholomew\" width=\"576\" height=\"383\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Even in these first few months that he has been Pope, both East and West have made gestures of friendship, building on the great work of their predecessors.\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: 13px;line-height: 19px\">Inspired by this, I started to consider what I could do. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>As I was thinking about this, I remembered an article I had read over at <a href=\"http:\/\/saintjamesprayforme.wordpress.com\/2011\/09\/11\/\u201cbecause-our-love-has-grown-cold-\u201d\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ramblings of a Byzantine Catholic<\/a> where it said that the East and West remain divided <span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>&#8220;because our love has grown cold&#8221;<\/em><\/span>. So, if that&#8217;s the case, what could I do to nurture and express love for our Orthodox brethren?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>A family that prays together, gets back together<\/h2>\n<p>In the end, I decided that the best thing I could do would be to pray with my Eastern brothers and sisters. It was for this reason that a few months ago I visited\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stgeorgeinsd.com\" target=\"_blank\">St. George&#8217;s Serbian Orthodox parish<\/a>\u00a0for evening prayer. Then, a few weeks ago I attended Vespers at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.st-anthony.org\" target=\"_blank\">St. Anthony Antiochian\u00a0Orthodox parish<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>When I was at St. Anthony&#8217;s, I was struck by the words of one of the prayers we prayed:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>&#8220;This is the day of Resurrection<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000\"> <em> Let us be\u00a0illuminated\u00a0by the feast<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;color: #000000\"> <em> Let us embrace each other!<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;color: #000000\"> <em> Let us call &#8220;Brothers&#8221; even those that hate us<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000\"> <em><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"> and forgive all by the Resurrection<\/span>, and so let us cry:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px\"><span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>&#8216;Christ is risen from the dead,<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000\"> <em> Trampling down death by death,<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000\"> <em> And upon those in the tombs<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000\"> <em> Bestowing life!'&#8221;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Could East and West be reunited? Could we each forgive past hurts? Could the Church once again breath with both lungs? Could we be one family again?\u00a0The answer given by this prayer is clear: by the power of Christ&#8217;s Resurrection, all things are possible.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>The article <a title=\"My great hope\" href=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2013\/07\/12\/my-great-hope\/\" target=\"_blank\">My Great Hope<\/a> first appeared on <a href=\"http:\/\/RestlessPilgrim.net\" target=\"_blank\">RestlessPilgrim.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I first heard that Jorge Bergoglio had been declared Pope, I immediately looked him up on my Conclave Android app and my eyes were quickly drawn to the sentence which said that in Argentina\u00a0he had been the Ordinary for Eastern-rite Catholics without an Ordinary of their own rite. I was hopeful that, given this background, his pontificate would be<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[276,259,2969,110,2188,1061,260],"class_list":["post-18617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-catholic","tag-east","tag-featured","tag-orthodox","tag-the-great-schism","tag-unity","tag-west"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18617"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56726,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18617\/revisions\/56726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}