The Co-Cathedral to host N.J. ecumenical prayer service, marking 1700 years since the Council of Nicaea

To mark the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, a statewide ecumenical prayer gathering has been planned May 3 at 11 a.m. to gather members of the Western and Eastern rite Churches on common purpose: to pray together the Creed establishing the beliefs of Christianity.

Bishop David M. O’Connell, C.M., will preside over the service hosted in St. Robert Bellarmine Co-Cathedral, Freehold. The “We Believe in One God” gathering will include Morning Prayer and two homilies – one each from the Western and Eastern Rite – and the praying of the Nicene Creed in both Greek and English by the assembly.

The ecumenical prayer gathering will be livestreamed on the diocesan Facebook page and YouTube channel.

A reception will follow in the St. Robert’s spiritual center.

“We will be using Morning Prayer as presented by the Anglican Church Rite 3, with some additions,” said Msgr. Sam Sirianni, Co-Cathedral rector, who noted that all churches that pray the Creed have some type of Morning Prayer.

While planning meetings are still underway to finalize details, Christians who pray the Nicene Creed have all been invited to participate – Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Eastern rite churches in communion with Rome, as well as Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Reform and Methodist.

The Nicene Creed is important as an ecumenical focus because “it was the common Creed that established the Christian faith at a time of controversy,” he said, “a time of a variety of views of who Jesus was, both in relationship to God and relationship to the Church.”

Called by Emperor Constantine in 325 C.E., the purpose of the Council of Nicaea was to settle “the controversy on the nature of Christ in relationship to God, which was causing riots,” Msgr. Sirianni said.

“It is the first time that the universal Church came together to discuss what was going on in the life of the Church,” he continued, “and to discuss it, debate, argue about it, then pronounce the faith that we all profess in the statement called the Creed. It was also the time when East and West saw themselves as one Church; even though one side spoke Greek and the other Latin, and had their own ways of celebrating Sacraments, there was a communion between the two spheres. From that perspective, it’s a major moment in the Church.”

To say that Jesus is the Son of God today, 1700 years after the Council, Msgr. Sirianni noted, “it would seem nobody would argue – although some in the Christian world would claim he is not equal to God.”

To this day, some aspect of the Arian controversy – the theological dispute that Jesus was actually a created being – remains alive in spite of the Creed’s clarifications. Other disputes over the inclusion of the “filioque” – the phrase in the Creed declaring that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son” – is still a sticking point for Orthodox Christians, and that line will be omitted from the ecumenical prayer event, he said.

Ecumenical gatherings are familiar territory for Msgr. Sirianni. St. Robert Bellarmine Co-Cathedral has been part of an interfaith clergy association in Freehold for some time, he noted, and is currently participating in a Lenten pulpit exchange on Wednesdays with other faith communities. Each house of worship takes turns hosting a prayer gathering with a preacher and fellowship afterwards.

“I’m hoping people will recognize that while there are different ways of understanding and expressing our faith, that we have a lot of common ground,” he said of his desire for the Nicene Creed gathering. He wants those assembled to work on that so “we can show a united face or a more perfect face of Christ to the world … hopefully it’s a step in the right direction between healing the rift – the Great Schism – between the East and the West.”

As both Churches will both be celebrating Easter on April 20, with the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed the same year, Msgr. Sirianni has been jokingly telling people, “Listen for the trumpets and hold your head up – look to the East!”