"As Churches, we have the duty to testify together the quintessence of Christianity, which is selfless love: only thus, by being together a bridge between the East and the West, can we conquer many people, men thirsty for the spiritual presence of the Church". This is the wish made by the archbishop of Athens and All Greece, His Beatitude Christodoulos, to the participants in the X Inter-Christian Symposium that ends today on the Isle of Tinos (Greece) on “Saint John Chrysostom, a bridge between the East and the West". The Symposium to which Pope Benedict XVI also sent a message is organised by the Franciscan Institute of Spirituality of the Papal University of Antonianum and the Theological Faculty of the Aristotle University of Tessaloniki. "The common Christian tradition of the first 10 centuries writes Christodoulos showed models and witnesses of spiritual life, among which stands out the figure of Saint John Chrysostom, a bridge between the East and the West. Every work, sermon, word and writing by the Holy Father takes inspiration from God’s only and true love for man and from man’s love for his neighbours". "If this love does not enter our spiritual culture" and if "the spiritual life in Christ moves away from the essence of love", "then our Christian identity is deprived of the existential experience".
