Unusual Kindness

It is less than one week until the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2020 begins (WPCU).  This is a week during which Christians come together to pray for their unity. Congregations and parishes all over the world exchange preachers or arrange special ecumenical celebrations and prayer services. Traditionally the week of prayer is celebrated between 18–25 January, between the feasts of St Peter and St Paul. The theme for 2020 is ‘Unusual Kindness’.  The resource materials available below have been prepared by the Christian churches in Malta and Gozo.

“Hospitality is a much needed virtue in our search for Christian unity. It calls us to a greater generosity to those in need. The people who showed unusual kindness to Paul and his companions did not yet know Christ, and yet it is through their unusual kindness that a divided people were drawn closer together. Our own Christian unity will be discovered not only through showing hospitality to one another, but also through loving encounters with those who do not share our language, culture or faith”. 

We are invited in this year’s Week Of Prayer for Christian Unity materials to see God working through people and places which offer unusual kindness. If only we would do the appropriate kind of looking.

Our prayer for Christian unity is deeply rooted in the Bible. We pray for unity because Jesus prayed that His disciples would be one, that the world might believe (John 17:20-21). St Paul also urged the churches to which he wrote to recognise their unity in Christ, even though there was much diversity within them (1 Corinthians 12:12-27).

Resources

The main resources for 2020 are available as downloads as follows: 

WPCU-2020-English-pamphlet

(Please note this is a large file – see download guide) * This is designed to be printed as an A5 booklet on A4 paper (please see the printing help from 2013) but can also be printed as A4 (in Adobe Acrobat Reader, choose File/Print, then under Size Options select ‘Fit’). For a Large Print version print the pamphlet as A4 (see above).

WPCU-2020-English-pamphlet-Final (1)

If you want to create a custom pamphlet for local use, this version can be edited in Microsoft Word.
Please note: most photos in the pamphlet are free to use but see p.29 for how to credit some of the photos to correctly license them.

Please note: most photos in the pamphlet are free to use but see p.29 for how to credit some of the photos to correctly license them.

In addition see below:

WPCU-2020-English-accessible-text-only

WPCU-2020-English-poster-Final-for-web

The text is in English only (Please note this is a large file – see download guide). This can also be printed on A4 paper: in Adobe Acrobat Reader, choose File/Print, then under Size Options select ‘Shrink oversized pages’.

You can add text to the local information box using a PDF editor, such as from Adobe.

There is also an Audio Reflection (Soundcloud) for each of the 8 days at this link Resources for WPCU 2020