Prayers for Christian unity are a response to faith in Jesus and his teaching, a part of missionary activity and a demonstration of Christians' concern for the world, said Cardinal Walter Kasper.

Writing in the Vatican newspaper about the Jan. 18-25 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity said ecumenism and mission go hand in hand.

Praying for the unity of Jesus' disciples, the cardinal said, means praying "with Jesus and in Jesus," who prayed for the unity of his disciples at the Last Supper.

"The origin and motor of ecumenism is meditation and contemplation," the cardinal said in an article in the Jan. 17 edition of L'Osservatore Romano.

The goal of ecumenism is full communion in Christ, he said, "but communion is not simply the result of human efforts, a work or an institution we create alone."

Unless people are united in prayer and unless prayer animates every ecumenical effort, any structures set up to gather and coordinate the joint efforts of Christians would be without a soul, Cardinal Kasper said.

Christian unity can only be a gift from God, he said, and it is a gift for which people must pray.

Christians are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the week of prayer this year; the cardinal said it is part of a longer history of exhortations for prayer and efforts to bring Christians together that arose spontaneously in every Christian community.

The fact that so many different people of different denominations had the same intuition led the Second Vatican Council to say that ecumenism "can be understood only as an impulse and work of the Holy Spirit," he said.

In addition, the cardinal said, among Protestants the ecumenical movement began with a heavy focus on the need for Christians to be united in order to give an effective witness in their missionary work. The mission focus, combined with a concern for peace after World War I, transformed ecumenism from a mainly European and North American phenomenon to a movement with a global vision and a global impact.

"This demonstrates that ecumenism is a response to the signs of the times," he said. "In a century that was among the darkest and cruelest, marked by two world wars that caused millions of deaths, by two totalitarian systems and numerous dictatorships that produced an infinite number of innocent victims, Christians decided to struggle against their ancient divisions, demonstrating that it is possible to reconcile with one another in spite of the faults committed by each in the past."

---CNS