If Christian are the messianic people then they must respond to God’s will and bring all men into unity, Father John L. Hein, S.J., said Sunday in a homily at an ecumenical service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

“He came to breakdown barriers between men, yet we have erected barriers within Christianity and have allowed walls to grow up around us,” the priest said in his homily to a small audience at the Central Presbyterian Church.

These walls are in opposition to the will of Jesus Christ. We erected them because we are weak and selfish, but most of all because we lack faith, confidence and courage.

“You can look at any wall and see that it is not only protective, but divisive. A wall is a monstrous thing. It is ugly whether it is the Berlin Wall or the barbed-wire wall around a concentration camp, but nothing is as ugly as the walls that divide Christians.”

Father Hein asked what keeps Christians from bringing into action what they have been called to be by faith and baptism into Christ Jesus. He replied, “Lack of faith, lack of confidence, ignorance and fear and a desire for security, nationalism, regionalism, false traditions. Instinctively we know we are weak in these false realities so we begin to build up walls about us. Walls protect us from reality, from the constant ongoingness of God’s activity toward unity.

The challenge to Christianity today is for us to know who we are. When we say we believe in Jesus Christ we don’t simply accept our salvation, we accept the responsibility for all men.

The churches are going through an identity crisis and when we find out who we are, then we can have unity. When the monstrous walls that separate the Christian communities from one another come tumbling down at the sound of the trumpet through faith then we will have passed our identity crisis and will be able to fall in love with all that is good in human history and bring all things into union with Christ”, Father Hein, director of Ignatius House, said.

Before his homily, the priest pointed out that the ecumenical service consisted of the traditions of all of the churches represented. He said that last year’s services at various churches used the rites of the host churches.

Participating in the service were the Rev. Fred R. Stair Jr., pastor of Central Presbyterian; the Rev. Herbert Leslie of Sandy Springs Christian Church; the Rev. Edward E. Tater of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church; and the Rev. James H. Costen of the United Presbyterian Church of the Master.

The priests said most people see the church as an established institution working within walls, hardly aware of those outside. “Yet we are to be the light of the world,” he said.

The litany, led by the Rev. Mr. Costen, emphasized the need for a single body of all believers and expressed sorrow because Christians have brought disunity, have forgotten the beam in their own eye, have hindered all witness of love, have “drawn boundaries between the children whether of race or nation or culture or class.”