VATICAN CITY (CNS) — As Christian churches prepare to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity will focus on affirming the Nicene Creed and its expression of the faith Christians share.
Materials for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity January 18-25 are prepared each year by the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity and Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches.
Pope Francis is scheduled to close the week with an ecumenical prayer service at Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls on January 25.
The pope and Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople also have expressed a hope to mark the anniversary together in May in Iznik, Turkey, the site of the ancient city of Nicaea.
The theme chosen for the 2025 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, underlining the importance of making a profession of faith, is Jesus’ question to Martha of Bethany: “Do you believe this?”
In the Gospel of John, Martha tells Jesus that if he had been there, her brother Lazarus would not have died. Jesus tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,” and then he asks if she believes. Martha responds with a declaration of faith: “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”
In the materials for the week, the Vatican and the World Council of Churches said the Nicaea anniversary “provides a unique opportunity to reflect on and celebrate the common faith of Christians, as expressed in the Creed formulated during this Council; a faith that remains alive and fruitful in our days.”
The Creed was revised at the Council of Constantinople in 381, which is why many refer to it as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.
But the Creed, as recited by Eastern Christians and Christians in the West — Catholics, Anglicans, and Protestants — has one important difference, which are the words, “and the Son,” a phrase known as the “filioque.”
Coming after a statement of belief in the Holy Spirit, “who proceeds from the Father,” the filioque was added to the Creed in the West in the sixth century to emphasize the divinity of Jesus and has been a point of disagreement ever since.
In preparing for the week of prayer, the Vatican and the World Council of Churches suggested that the filioque be dropped from the Creed when it is recited at ecumenical celebrations.
“While the filioque clause remains part of the liturgical tradition of the Latin and some other Western Churches, Bishops of Rome omit it when reciting the Creed in ecumenical encounters with leaders of Eastern Churches,” the materials said.
The material also provided background on the Council of Nicaea, which was convoked by Emperor Constantine.
“The Church, having just emerged from hiding and persecution, was beginning to experience how difficult it was to share the same faith in the different cultural and political contexts of the time,” the material said. “Agreement on the text of the Creed was a matter of defining the essential common foundations on which to build local communities that recognized each other as sister churches, each respecting the diversity of the other.”
The council, it said, attempted to resolve several differences, including: “the nature of Christ in relation to the Father; the question of a single date to celebrate Easter and its relationship with the Jewish Passover; opposition to theological opinions considered heretical; and how to reintegrate believers who had abandoned the faith during the persecutions in earlier years.”