For unity and peace in Nicaea

Matthew Neugebauer

Thursday, November 27, 2025

Photo of three hands joined together on a wooden table.

Photo by Alexander Suhorucov on Pexels.

At the heart of Pope Leo XIV's journey to Türkiye this weekend will be a pilgrimage to Iznik, a small city about 140 km south of Istanbul. Iznik is better known to Church history by its Greek name, Nicaea. That's where, 1700 years ago, the First Ecumenical Council was held. This Friday, Pope Leo is gathering with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and other Christian leaders for an ecumenical prayer service to celebrate the landmark anniversary.

(If you're curious to learn more about this and other councils, we have a number of articles up on our blog. These include an installment of Deacon-structing and two from our One Body series on ecumenism: from this past January on this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity that focused on the council, and from last month all about creeds through the Church’s history.)

Nicaea might also sound familiar because we hear it on Sundays when we say the Nicene Creed: it's named after the council because that's where it originated! At the First Council of Nicaea, the Fathers of the Church gathered together and agreed that Jesus truly is God, and not just an intermediary between God and humanity. The divinity of Jesus is the central doctrine of the Christian faith. This means that the First Council of Nicaea can be considered to be the most important gathering in the history of the Church to happen other than the ones mentioned in Scripture itself!

A sign of love in truth

I think the prayer gathering between the pope – the head of the Roman and Eastern Catholic Churches – and the ecumenical patriarch – the symbolic leader of the Eastern Orthodox Churches – is poignant for our time. Whenever Christian leaders come together to pray to the God we share and express the faith we hold in common, it shows the world that unity in love, not divisions, conflicts, disagreements, or violence, has the final word.

To unite in love with another person, or seek peace and mutual understanding between cultures and countries, is to celebrate what we have in common, to accompany another person, share our time and resources with them, and “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2) by responding with compassion to their vulnerabilities. We can offer food and conversation to the poor and companionship to the lonely. We can listen to our friends as they express their joys and struggles, and express our joys and struggles with them.

Love means we also celebrate our differences by appreciating and respecting another person’s unique personality and life story, or the heritage and history of another culture or ecclesial community. Along with delighting in the things that make us similar, it also says, “you are different from me, and I find those things exciting and wonderful and interesting about you!”

In his letter on the 1700th anniversary released this past weekend, Pope Leo reminds us that we are called to unite in love with our neighbours because God united in love with us first – the very belief that the Council of Nicaea expressed:

The Nicene Creed does not depict a distant, inaccessible and immovable God who rests in himself, but a God who is close to us and accompanies us on our journey in the world, even in the darkest places on earth. His immensity is revealed when he makes himself small, laying aside his infinite majesty to become our neighbour in the little ones and in the poor (#7)

Ultimately, our love for God, and above all the love God showed us by coming to us, is the only way we can love our neighbour. Otherwise, “radical love for our neighbour,” Pope Leo writes, “requires a “heroism” that would overwhelm and oppress us.” At the same time, we can show our love for the Triune God through our “dedication to our brothers and sisters, especially the least, the poorest, the abandoned, and the marginalized. What we have done to the least of these, we have done to Christ (cf. Matthew 25:31-46)" (#11).

While theological deliberation is important, the greatest argument for the truth of the Nicene faith is an encounter with the mercy of the Triune God: “In the face of disasters, wars, and misery, we bear witness to God’s mercy to those who doubt him only when they experience his mercy through us” (ibid.). God expressed his overwhelming mercy by coming to us and giving us himself in Jesus. We experience and express this merciful love when we advocate for peace, participate in disaster relief, and comfort the suffering in their loss. We pray that those who experience a renewed peace, material recovery in disaster, and comfort in suffering can see who God is, and their doubt and despair can turn into faith and hope.

That's a powerful message, particularly in the Middle East, which has experienced intense conflict and continues to today. Pope Leo is travelling to the Middle East to meet his brother Bartholomew, and together they will pray to God for peace and unity.

You can watch the Ecumenical Prayer Service from Iznik, Türkiye on Friday, November 28 at 12:30 pm ET, 9:30 am PT on Salt + Light TV and Salt + Light Plus.