Being a Guest and Bringing God in: Spiritual-theological Reflections on the Ecumenical Journey in the German Local Church

Abstract

The vote of the Ecumenical Working Group of Protestant and Catholic theologians is embedded in the following considerations in the context of the German local church, in which the painful rupture of the Reformation and the lack of church fellowship is experienced all the more painfully against the background of the good ecumenical experiences since the beginning of the 20th century. There is an ecumenism of life which has been accompanied by well-founded theological studies, and following the ``Joint Declaration on Justification'' and the recognition of baptism, it is precisely ``Eucharistic hospitality'' in the sense of mutual invitation to participate in the Lord's Supper or Eucharist in the respective liturgical form which will make reconciliation possible. When we are ``reciprocal guests'' in the celebration of the Eucharist and the celebration of the Lord's Supper, the church becomes a credible sign of salvation for a broken world.