“Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. 12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name.” This was the prayer of Jesus Christ at the night of his crucifixion. He was apparently praying for the Christian unity.
Bishop Raphael, secretary of the Holy Synod and angel of central Cairo churches, talks about the Christian unity saying: We can only understand Christian life based on unity among churches as it belongs to one shepherd and one head as one body.
However many people have been praying for Christian unity, it has not been achieved yet. We should know it when we receive communion together.
Yet, it was not achieved as we have different points of view as some people consider it unity on the level of headship and others consider it mutual love and joint prayers. On the other hand, the Coptic Orthodox Church believes that unity means one faith, alter, priesthood, and sacrifice.
Such unity leads us to know the son of God and his one church. St. Paul says: “We should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ.”
