Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2022 29 May to 5 June
The resources for this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity are now available. The Week is celebrated in Aotearoa New Zealand between Ascension and Pentecost Sundays each year, so 29 May to 5 June this year.
The chosen theme for 2022 is "We saw his star in the East, and we came to worship him," and is based on Matthew 2:2
You can get your resources from this link, as well as from diocesan websites and parishes in due course.
The Week of Prayer began as a Catholic observance in 1908. In the 1920s other Christian churches began their own observance of a period of prayer for unity. In 1968 for the first time the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity jointly prepare the materials for the Week, a practice which has continued ever since.
Each year the Christian churches in a different part of the world are invited to work together on the materials. The resources are then adapted in each country for their own use, with the Catholic Bishops' Committee for Ecumenism adapting the resources for use in Aotearoa New Zealand.
This year the Middle East Council of Churches based in Beirut, Lebanon, was entrusted with the task of choosing the theme and preparing texts. They chose the theme of the star that rose in the east for a number of reasons. While many Western Christians celebrate Christmas, the more ancient feast, and still the principal feast of many Eastern Christians, is the epiphany when God’s salvation is revealed to the nations in Bethlehem and at the Jordan. This focus on the theophany (the manifestation) is, in a sense, a treasure which Christians of the Middle East can offer to their brothers and sisters around the world.