Italian Musing #4: Ecumenical Shop on Borgo Pio, and Christian Unity

We stayed at the Domus Carmelitana S. Alberto, a few blocks from the Vatican and just a step away from Borgo Pio, with its many religious shops. Where else would a window shopper see episcopal miters, cardinal's garb, beautifully made vestments on display? Many of the shops specialized in inexpensive religious trinkets - holy medals sold by the hundred in plastic bags, or even popeners, bottle openers with the image of the Pope on the handle. (No, I'm not kidding: I saw one.)

Cafes, hotels, restaurants: all were oriented to the tourist, and primarily the Catholic tourist. The Vatican was the predominant image among all the post cards. Besides clerical garb, the shops featured nativities, statues of saints, and other typically Catholic devotional item.

One shop, though, was different. Its sign proclaimed that it was an ecumenical shop. I thought to myself, "Oh, this is where the Evangelical Protestants have a shop in dialogue with Catholicism, close to the Vatican." But I was wrong.

In the U.S., where Protestants collectively form the largest religious group, any ecumenical dialogue or event will involve - and focus on - quite a few prominent Protestants and one or a few prominent Catholics. The split that is uppermost in everyone's mind is that of Martin Luther and John Calvin, with the Reformation.

In Italy, though, there are few Protestant groups. Ecumenical, in this context, is more likely to speak to the Catholic-Orthodox split, and dialogue to increase understanding. This ecumencial shop, then, was filled with prints of icons and mosaics. Many were familiar images - Rublev's Trinity, mosaics from Hagia Sophia in modern Turkey, and others. Large prints, icon reproductions, and hand-written icons dominated the front of the store; the back of the shop was a book store.

As I perused the cards and pictures, there were many aha! moments when I recognized an image I had seen during this visit to Rome: Christ the Good Shepherd from the catacombs, the mosaics from the basilicas of St. John Lateran or St. Paul Outside the Walls. Curious, I looked turned over some of the unfamiliar images, finding quite a few more that were from Rome, or from ancient Catholic churches in Italy.

In a flash, I got it: this shop was ecumenical: nearly all of the images (Rublev was the exception!) dated from the first millennium of the Church, before the Catholic-Orthodox split, long before the Protestant Reformation. This shop, then, offered us our common Christian heritage. The atmosphere was certainly Orthodox - the music that was playing, the modern Christian images, the books for sale, sprang from the Orthodox tradition. Yet the shop was not catering to the relatively small number of Orthodox in Rome: this shop had this location specifically so that Catholic tourists like myself would stop in and browse.

I have been thinking about that shop during this worldwide Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Various churches and church organizations publish prayer resources; some locations hold prayer services open to all Christians; nearly every congregation and parish will include Christian unity in their Sunday prayers. In all of these celebrations, though, our eyes are cast forward. We think about the theological and liturgical differences that divide us; we wonder how we could ever find a way to unity without simply become lowest common denominator Christians. We pray for Christian unity: but we seem neither scandalized by our divisions nor particularly eager to embrace our separated Christian sisters and brothers. "How could it all come about? we wonder, then answer ourselves, "but with God, all things are possible, I suppose."

The ecumenical shop in Borgo Pio draws our eyes to the millennium of unity that we have already experienced and forgotten. These were not centuries without controversy and heresy. Many councils were required to develop an understanding of Christ as one person with two natures, or Mary's role as Theotokos, Mother of God. Violence broke out over some theological disputes: no mild mannered disagreements these! Nonetheless, Christians everywhere belonged to the same Church, worshipped wherever they found other Christians, experienced liturgy in both eastern and western style rites - and sometimes disagreed about what it meant to be Christian. We already know how to do this, the Ecumenical Shop seems to be saying, let's find our shared roots, and from there find a way to heal our separations.

I discovered this shop early in our travels; it shaped my perceptions of many of the holy sites. Santa Susanna, with its 1700 years of worship - built over the house church where Susanna was martyred in 293 AD- was really a Christian site. In spite of the ornate baroque decor of the current church, I imagined all the visitors over the centuries. Pope Saint Gregory the Great is said to have prayed here. Surely other patriarchs and Christians on pilgrimage came. People worshipped here, I realized, before they had names and ways to divide up Christ's Church into denominations.

For just a moment, there, and at St. Paul Outside the Walls, and Sacro Speco, I felt the communion of that time before divisions. Christians with diverse ideas and political perspectives: but seeking truth and worshipping together. The doors of all Christian churches would welcome me, and my parish would welcome all Christians who came: because we shared a faith and a unity.

In this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, then, I am praying for an outpouring of the gift of memory and recall: that we remember and begin to re-experience the thousand years of unity we shared, and we seek to experience it again.