Text of the Agreement

We, Archbishop Gregory Wayne Godsey, OSB, Archbishop Metropolitan of The Ancient Apostolic Communion, and Bishop Juan Carlos Plata Jaimes, Presiding Bishop of the Diócesis Misionera de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles, do hereby enter into a Concordat of Intercommunion between our two faith communities, each a part of the Mystical Body of Christ.

We share a common Faith in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and a common sacramental system consistent with traditional Catholic belief, recognizing particularly the preeminence of the Eucharistic Liturgy (Mass) as the core and center of Catholic life.

We accept the validity of each other’s Apostolic Succession and Sacramental Orders, and we recognize at the same time the diversity of our separate jurisdictional disciplines and devotional practices.

Therefore we do hereby sanction. approve and encourage joint participation of our church memberships at the Eucharistic table, and we foster and encourage joint celebration of the Eucharist by those in Holy Orders, preserving the discretion of the local authority.

Further, we hereby affirm that each Church will work with the other in a Christ-centered relationship, characterized by mutual love, collaboration in ministry, prudence and the observance of the highest ethical and moral standards.

And we affirm that each Church will honor unity with diversity and the primacy of conscience, always based on respectful and prayerful dialogue.

22 May 2010

+Archbishop Gregory Godsey, OSB, Archbishop Metropolitan, The Ancient Apostolic Communion

+Bishop Juan Carlos Plata Jaimes, Presiding Bishop, Diócesis Misionera de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles

We would also like to thank Abbot Father William Higginbotham for his work in bringing this agreement to fruition.

The text of that agreement follows:

We, Patriarch Mar Markus I of the Byzantine Catholic Church, Inc. (an Independent Jurisdiction), and Archbishop Gregory Godsey, Archbishop Metropolitan of the Ancient Apostolic Communion, do hereby enter into a Concordat of Intercommunion between our two faith communities, each a part of the Mystical Body of Christ.

We share a common Faith in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and a common sacramental system consistent with traditional Catholic belief, recognizing particularly the preeminence of the Eucharistic Liturgy (Mass) as the core and center of Catholic life.

And we affirm that each Church will honor unity with diversity and the primacy of conscience, always based on respectful and prayerful dialog. We further affirm that each jurisdiction will remain autonomous and separate and they we will not interfere with the daily operations of each others jurisdictions in any way. Further we state that either jurisdiction can end this Concordat of Intercommunion by simply notifying the other of their desire to end the intercommunion.

March 24, 2010

+Patriarch Mar Markus I, Patriarch, Byzantine Catholic Church, Inc. (an Independent Jurisdiction)

+Archbishop Gregory Godsey, Archbishop Metropolitan, The Ancient Apostolic Communion

I have, several times, been asked the question: “How come I can’t ever find that ‘transcendent’ that your supposed to get when you are religious?” or “How can I know there is a God if I don’t ever get to experience Him?” My answer is always the same, but somehow seems to be new to each person I give it too:

Now, the warm and fuzzy feels most people associate with faith, are surprisingly a lot like the warm and fuzzies of being in love. Well, God is love, so that makes sense, but just as love is sometimes more a conscious choice than a warm and fuzzy; say like when you have a fight with you partner, you may have been a little unhappy with them, but it didn’t stop you loving them, just the warm and fuzzy was gone for a little while faith is the same, in that it is the living expression of our love for God; you have faith in your partner that things will resolve themselves and you’ll be back to the warm and fuzzies;; same with faith, you have to trust and hope in your love of God, to be patient and allow God (the ultimate Partner/Lover) to respond to you.

People always seem to expect trumpet blasts and earthquakes and lighting flashes when encountering God, but God almost never works that way. God is the cool summer breeze on a hot summer day, the whispering wind tickling your ear at a rock concert. God is. God is gentle, quiet and too easily over looked. God comes to us and is present to us hundreds, thousands of times each day, if only we opened our ears to hear Him or our eyes to see Him.

Once you have learned how to open your ears to hear God’s whispers, then you can have faith that God will continue a dialogue, as long as you continue listening and have faith that even in the dry moments, God will return and be a cool gentle breeze on a warm summer day.

My experience of God, was first and most powerfully as a Lover, so I am very much one who believes wholly and entirely in the words of of St John, God is love and all who abide in love abide in God and God in them. To desire God and be desired by God; to posses and be possessed by God;; to know it is ok to have lover’s spats with God, that God won’t take offense;; to be exhilarate and excited by God to live and breath and move because of one’s love for God;; very much like the first bloom of romantic love but a hundred times over in intensity

Others who have explained much better than I can are John of the Cross, Teresa of Availa, Cathrine of Siena, Theresa the Little Flower and Francis of Assisi; It is a kind of rapturous love, that fills, enlivens, exalts, emboldens, terrifies all at once. The rapturous experience of a love so pure and intense it feels like it will melt your bones and heart and mind away, that is God and Heaven

Hope is similar, you hope, because of your love of your partner; that you will have a long happy life together. Hope is also an expression of love, a joyful looking forward to what is to come
but first you have to hope for a relationship with God, like you did when you were single and hoped for your partner. Then you have to be open to God responding in God’s way not yours. God whispers not shouts;; the earthquakes and lighting bolts people look for is not how God really works; God whispers gently in your ear, though a sunset, in the look of love in your partners eyes.

Now, people will ask me how I know how they think or feel about not being able to find God or lapses or lack of faith it is quite simple; I’ve had similar problems myself. To say that I have faith is not to say I never have doubts or questions and true person of faith does. All people, particularly people of faith have moments of cold and aloneness, it happens to everyone, we just know it is passing.

Two of my friends risked and lost and are now hurting, but they had the wonders of experiencing God in such an extraordinary way. They will heal, with time, and find love again. I wish more than anything that I could be with them and offer them a hug and a shoulder to cry on, but I do what I do. I listen.

One of my friends has just ended a casual relationship in which on the lower aspect of the human need for love and companionship was met. Such relationshps cheapen us and demean real love when we find it. Bleieve me I speak from plently of personal experience on this one. I am glad that this friend has been able to grow beyond it and has in deed found someone to love wholely and entirely.

My other friend is trying to manufature love where none exists. I have been that way before and can say it only leads to devitation in one’s life. It broke my heart to have to tell her I would never preform that wedding, but I can soo too clearly where it is headed. She is ever much in my heart and prayers and I wish all the best and hope she can succeed against all the odds.

Now, why have I gone into all this? So to say that LOVEISAHELLVALOTWORK and that, my firends, you can bank and borrow on. Yet, despite the hard work involved, I know of very few things more rewardng and no greater gift of God on earth. We just have to remember when we are upset or hurt or heartrent, that love is much more often a choice to go on being and caring for someone than a warm and fuzzy feeling. It is hard work and not for the lazy, lame or scared. But, oh, if the pay out isn’t beyond understanding. Love is the only thing that the more you give away the more you have to give, or as St Bernard of Clarvaux said; “I love because I love and love so that I may love all the more.”

God Bless