Walk4One

WHEN YOUNG Tasmanian Catholic Samuel Clear decided to take the late Pope John Paul II’s call to universal ecumenism literally, he didn’t think it would almost cost him his life.

Being beaten, robbed at knifepoint, suffering food poisoning, typhoid fever and salmonella, being shot at, and stalked by a puma in the wild may have been things the early Christians were exposed to in the first hundred years or so of the Church. But it’s surely not something an enthusiastic young Australian should expect, whose only crime was to walk around the globe to highlight the importance of praying for Christian unity.

Yet that is what young Sam has undertaken. Having started on December 14, 2006, Sam is currently on a 564-day trip that will see him cover 29,000 kilometres, 18,000 of which will be travelled by foot.

4:01post meridian

From the Amazon to Venezuela’s Angel Falls through to the wilds of Wyoming in the United States, it has been a breath-taking initiative, which he has called “Walk4One”. His journey will all end at the biggest Catholic event Australia has ever seen – World Youth Day in Sydney that starts on July 15, 2008.

Throughout his trip, Sam is urging people to join him in praying for Christian unity at 4.01pm daily. This is also motivation for Christians the world over to take part in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity that starts on Friday, January 18. By setting their watches to 4.01pm in their own time zones, Christians could potentially create a worldwide prayer session for the sake of Christian unity.

Sam prepared for the arduous journey by saving up for a year and selling everything he owns, including a four-wheel drive Land Rover. He also did intense fitness work, and spent 12 months map reading, piecing his route together town by town.

He walks up to 60 kilometres a day, sometimes in searing heat, keeping Christians the world over up to date on his adventures with a journal on an internet blog.

His travels will take him from Cape Branco at the eastern-most point of Brazil, through South America, Central America and North America, across Russia and down through Europe to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

Ut Unum Sint

By taking on this dangerous pilgrimage, Sam believes that Walk4One is a powerful opportunity for Catholics worldwide to respond in a very real and practical way to John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint (On Commitment to Ecumenism).

In this encyclical, the late Pope, who started World Youth Day, refers to ecumenism as “an organic part of her (Church) life and work, and consequently must pervade all that she is and does”.

John Paul II also says that this quest for unity springs from the very nature of living one’s faith.

“Division openly contradicts the will of Christ, provides a stumbling block to the world, and inflicts damage on the most holy cause of proclaiming the Good News to every creature,” our late Pope said. All Christians, therefore, “should be inspired by and be submissive to Christ’s prayer for unity”.

Sam was motivated to undertake this massive expedition when witnessing how divided Christianity is.

“Quite simply, I am doing this to draw attention to unity,” said Sam, who is convinced that division among Christians across the globe is bringing great sadness to Jesus.

Sam doesn’t claim to know what true unity looks like, but he’s pretty sure the current state of affairs isn’t it. He had read several autobiographies in which Christians spoke of being ostracized, even by family and friends, when their spiritual search led them to convert from one Christian denomination to another.

“Despite all believing in Christ, various conflicting theologies, practices, experiences, misunderstandings and belief systems continue to cause judgement, conflict and division between Christians,” he said.

“The Church is the Body of Christ, and it is broken. To peacefully travel the world praying and inviting prayer, I hope to encourage all Christians to embrace a desire to be united completely: One love, one in Christ, one world – and spreading a message via email just doesn’t cut it anymore.”

Demanding trip

Already his quest has cost him dearly – not including what he’s sold just to fund his trip.

In May 2007 he was robbed in Costa Rica by a pack of thieves as he walked with a South American World Youth day group.

The robbers threatened long-blade knives at the group of 11 pilgrims as they lined up along the railing of a bridge as heavy traffic roared past oblivious to the roadside mayhem.

They stripped the prayer group of valuables including cameras, backpacks, mobile (cellular) phones, wallets, watches and sunglasses. But in a true moment of grace, a potentially life-threatening sequence of events turned into something of a conversion experience for both Sam and one of his assailants.

One of the thieves – a 16-year-old boy – was later caught and when Sam later saw him, the boy was “incredibly ashamed and very quiet”.

Once Sam explained what his group was doing, his friend gave the young man some Rosary beads.

Two hours later Sam saw the thief entering court, and he was still holding the Rosary beads.

In Venezuela, Sam was stalked by a puma in the middle of the night, and held up at gunpoint by a farmer who mistook him for a robber.

Youth leader

It wasn’t always this way, however. A gifted teenager, Sam grew up on the isolated Flinders Island off the north-east coast of Tasmania, an island state of the south-east coast of Australia.

Since he was a boy growing up on Flinders Island, Sam was prone to adventuring and exploring around the island, and his parents trusted him to look after himself even when he was out of their sight.

As a teenager it was clear the lanky lad was destined for great things. He represented the island state in basketball and Australian Rules football, a local sport played professionally worth hundreds of millions of dollars on an elite level.

He even tried out for a professional Australian Rules club but retired at just 19 with two ankle reconstructions, two shoulder reconstructions and a broken back to show for it.

He also completed a degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Tasmania in 2001, but God was clearly telling him that he was being called to something else.

So, rekindling his faith, Sam became a leader of the Youth Mission Team, a ministry of the Charismatic Disciples of Jesus Covenant Community that focuses on helping young people develop a personal relationship with Christ.

It seems providential, then, that what God is calling him to do right now may draw Christians around the world to a closer personal relationship with Christ by praying for Christian Unity.