Helsinki Lutheran Bishop Calls for Shared Eucharist with Roman Catholics
Bishop Eero Huovinen Addresses Italian National Eucharistic Congress
BARI, Italy/GENEVA, 14 June 2005 (LWI) – Finnish Bishop Dr Eero Huovinen pleaded for shared Eucharist between Lutherans and Roman Catholics when he addressed an annual gathering of Roman Catholics aimed at strengthening dedication to Holy Communion.
“It is our fervent wish that we Lutherans could kneel together with our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers at the common Communion table,” Huovinen, bishop of the Helsinki Diocese, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF), told the 24th Italian National Eucharistic Congress, held May 21-29 in Bari, Italy.
“We yearn for a common table because the Holy Eucharist is the feast of Christ’s presence,” he said. His call for unity on May 25, the day the Congress devoted to ecumenism, was applauded.
The ELCF bishop believes Roman Catholics and Lutherans commonly respect and practice the holy feast, a point from which the churches should seek unity. “Faith in the real presence of Christ at the Eucharist has always united us Lutherans and Catholics,” he said. “We have always wanted to have confidence that Christ himself is present at the Holy Eucharist in the bread and the wine ‘truly and in substance,’ vere et substantialiter, giving the baptized believer the reality of all of salvation. As a community the church lives in the true meaning of the words de eucharistia, out of the mystery and gift of the Eucharist.”
While Huovinen desires a shared table, he believes the churches must find commonality in beliefs and practices of basic truths before joining at that table. “There is no shortcut to a joint Holy Eucharist,” he said. “The goal of visible unity and of a common Communion demand that we dig deeper into the foundation of our Christian faith,” he added.
Huovinen, who is the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Vice-President for the Nordic Countries, hopes the churches would take the steps necessary toward eucharistic sharing. The Congress’s dedication to ecumenism may be, according to the bishop, one of such initiatives.
A significant milestone of ongoing bilateral relations and dialogue between Lutherans and Roman Catholics was the October 1999 signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the LWF and the Vatican in Augsburg, Germany. (377 words)
(By Christine Hallenbeck, youth trainee, LWF Office for Communication Services.)
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