20.01.2026
‘Our calling is to transcend historical divisions’ – Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in Clontarf
Representatives of the different Christian traditions in Clontarf drew together in faith yesterday evening (Monday January 19) for an ecumenical service to mark the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Joining the parishioners of St John the Baptist Catholic Parish were members of the Church of Ireland, Scots Presbyterian, Methodist and Ukrainian Catholic Church along with other church and community partners in the area.
The preacher was Archbishop Michael Jackson who thanked parishioners and Fr John O’Brien for inviting him to share with them and brought greetings from the clergy and people of the Church of Ireland Dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough.
Drawing on Ephesians 4:4 [‘There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling …’], he said: “The triad: body, mind and spirit trips off our tongue readily and rightly. It speaks of a coherent and a cohesive way of viewing life in its fulness: we live, we think, we believe. It speaks also of the need for an integration of energy and of confidence in a world characterized by uncertainty and fragmentation. Such a realization strikes us forcefully as we draw together the threads of a new year dawning and as we ourselves look into the future, juggling hopes and fears as any and all of us must do. Turmoil accompanies us as 2026 continues to take shape on the international and therefore on the ecumenical stage. This is because the whole world is our oikoumene, our habitation,”
The theme and resources for this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity were chosen by Christian Churches in Armenia, which in 301 AD, was the first nation to adopt Christianity as its official religion. Archbishop Jackson said that the witness of Armenian people throughout history was a living and lived example and a constant inspiration to all. He added that the people of Dublin were bound to the ongoing suffering of the people of Armenia by the presence of the khachkar memorial in the grounds of Christ Church Cathedral to commemorate the Armenian Genocide which began in 1915.
“The faithfulness and the versatility of the Armenian people in their torment is a constant reminder to us that light triumphs over darkness and that light is not quenched or snuffed by darkness. This is the great hope of The Christmas Gospel in St John 1. This is the great hope of the call to prayer and the call to courage which are deeply embedded in The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity as it is offered to us in 2026. We are here this evening to enjoy it and to rejoice in it, to commit once again to the experiment of faith in our church lives and to be the experiment of church in our society and in our nation,” he stated.
The body of Jesus Christ and the one Spirit connects and unites the Churches denominations and families, the Archbishop said. “Ecumenism is not a competition with God or with one another with the purpose of building a tower of togetherness on earth. Ecumenism, as with communion, and as we found last year when we explored the connection through the Nicene Creed between us and God through our relationship with God is a given,” he commented.
He continued: “Our calling is to transcend historical and inherited divisions, to lock in the energy that each and all of them carry, and to witness as one body. Unity is not of our manufacturing. Unity is not our burden of failure to deliver as our denominations and church families continue to develop and change intrinsically as every institution does distinctly yet not inevitably divisively. Unity is our one and living response to the full presence of God at the heart and at the horizon of God’s creation. This is because unity is and always will be the essence of God. Ecumenism is our spiritual voice on earth to keep us abreast of God ‘on earth as it is in heaven‘.