An ecumenical meeting of “Synaxe”
By Martin Hoegger, pastor of the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Vaud, www.hoegger.org
“Synaxe” brought together around forty members of various Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant religious communities for its 39th meeting from July 3 to 9, 2024. An intense week of sharing, reflection and prayer experienced in the Brâncoveanu monastery, near Sibiu, at the foot of the Carpathians.
This is the fifth meeting in which I participate. Finding friends in Christ, brothers and sisters in him, children of the same Father is a joy! Here are some highlights.
Bishop Athenagoras, Orthodox Metropolitan of the Benelux and President of Synaxe, explains this year’s theme: “Blessed are the peacemakers”. How to become a peacemaker? “The peace blessed by Christ,” he says, “is the result and fruit of the purification of the heart and union with God.” It begins by meeting others and listening to them: “we need hospitality of the face and the ear.”
Peace, fruit of the Holy Spirit.
For Brother Guillaume, from the Taizé community, peace is one of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). We must fight against our own nature to find peace. This is the essential thing and the first Christians did it. They thus became free people filled with the gifts of the Spirit.
We must build peace above all by becoming reconciled people, by welcoming the gifts of others. It is linked to the simplicity of life which leads to openness to others.
Pastor Jean-Philippe Calame, chaplain of the Grandchamp community in Switzerland, believes that peace is essentially a gift that comes from God. It is in history, but not of history. Jesus alone is the accomplished peace of God. Politics is not enough to create it. He alone can give it.
Claretian and specialist in consecrated life (Rome), Maurizio Bevilacqua gives a reflection on forgiveness and peace in the light of the famous “sun brother canticle” of Francis of Assisi: “Praised be you, my Lord, for those who forgive for your love and endure sickness and tribulation”. Francis is convinced that any reconciliation requires above all the capacity to forgive.
Bela Visky, Protestant pastor and professor of theology in Cluj, cites a commentary by Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the Beatitude of the peacemakers. He affirms that the Christian must provide peace actively, not just live it passively. The Christian welcomes others by wishing them peace and prefers to suffer than to make a person suffer. The various religious communities should connect with each other in this way.
How can we be more of a peacemaker? This question will accompany us for a long time, especially in contexts in which it is difficult to live the love of enemies. A participant from Ukraine testified to this difficulty.
Peace of the heart in the Christian tradition
Dom Johan Geysens, from the Benedictine monastery of Chevetogne in Belgium, spoke about peace of the heart in the Christian tradition, with some important spiritual figures. He begins with the “life of Saint Benedict”, of whom Gregory the Great said that he “dwelt with himself”. That is why he feared no one. In the “Imitation of Jesus Christ”, T. A Kempis emphasizes inner peace in response to external solicitations: the necessary condition for finding peace is inner conversion: “Leave yourself and you will enjoy great inner peace”!
Romanian Orthodox Metropolitan Serafim recalled that the hesychast tradition emphasizes interiorization. Every prayer must be a prayer of the heart, not just the one we call the “Jesus Prayer”. Meditation must descend into our heart, through asceticism and prayer. Without them, we cannot acquire peace of heart.
Professor Pierre-Yves Brandt, from the Faculty of Theology in Lausanne, sees in Abraham the example of the meek who lives the beatitude of meekness. He calms a conflict between his shepherds and those of Lot. The meek is also a peacemaker. Between Christian confessions, we also need these peacemakers, namely men and women who do not occupy all the space, but leave others the possibility of responding to the call they have received.
Sister Magdalen, from the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist (Essex, England), introduced us to the spirituality of Saint Silouan, a monk from Mount Athos who died in 1938, who lived the beatitude of peace by teaching and living the love of enemies. He sees a link between peace, love of enemies and humility. “The soul of the humble man is like the sea; if you throw a stone into the sea, it troubles the surface of the waters for a moment, then sinks into the depths”.
Peace, the fruit of prayer
Many have (re)discovered the beauty of the Orthodox services and liturgy in the old church in the centre of the monastery with its frescoes which evoke those who loved the Lord before us. We are surrounded by “this cloud of witnesses” that encourages us (Heb 12:1). The other places also spoke to us, such as the Orthodox Cathedral of Sibiu and the Catholic Church on its Great Square, where we experienced the Eucharist.
The Protestant liturgy lived in the open air in the clearing of the monastery touched us by the spiritual quality that was expressed there. It is fortunate that an Orthodox brother underlined the beauty of this liturgy.
The moments of celebration were rich in diversity. They brought us together in the unity of faith in Christ confessed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, whose 1700th anniversary of its promulgation we will commemorate in 2025. Similarly, the times of Lectio divina on the first letter of John gave flavor to our meetings by making the link between our faith and our paths of life. I was one of the animators.
The reference to the Word of God is central, because through it Christ speaks to us. The purpose of the lectio is to encounter him and to say “you” to him in prayer. And it is he who unites us. In these moments, we were also able to “speak in I” and encourage each other with spontaneous prayers.
Certainly, we felt the pain of an imperfect Eucharistic communion, but we remembered that the walls do not reach to heaven. Despite this, we were able to share so many beautiful things and were encouraged to take steps forward.
We were also happy with the participation of several young people, but we are aware of the need to expand the meeting even more to a new generation.
After these blessed days, we left with hearts filled with peace, joy and gratitude for belonging to the same Body of Christ. We hope that this beautiful story of Synaxis continues, as God wants.
Read the full report of this meeting here: https://www.hoegger.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Article-Brancoveanu-long.pdf
Article on the 50th anniversary meeting of Synaxe in 2022: https://www.cath.ch/newsf/depuis-50-ans-la-vie-consacree-au-service-de-lunite-des-chretiens/
Synaxe website: https://eiir.wordpress.com/
