The tenth anniversary of the signing of a major doctrinal agreement between Lutherans, Roman Catholics and Methodists was celebrated in Germany over the weekend.

The ceremony was held from Oct. 30-31 in Augsburg, where the original signing of Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ) occured in 1999 between members of the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF).

Providing a consensus between the two groups on the doctrine of salvation, the JDDJ states that all believers are saved by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, apart from works. Methodists joined the agreement in 2006 during a meeting of the World Methodist Council in Seoul, South Korea.

In his sermon in the Augsburg Cathedral, the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) Walter Cardinal Kasper stated that the JDDJ was a sign of the workings of the Holy Spirit.

"We cannot be thankful enough for that and for many, many other steps that have been possible since," said Kasper, an original signer of the JDDJ. "The godless complaining about the supposed standstill in the ecumenical movement and the miserable moaning about what has not yet been achieved, forgetting all that has been given us in the last few years - all that is sheer ingratitude. We need a spiritual ecumenism, and it has grown, thank goodness, in the last few years."

LWF General Secretary Rev. Dr. Ishmael Noko, also an original signatory of the JDDJ, echoed Kasper's remarks, saying that the Holy Spirit enables Christians, "to overcome the ever-present forces of division in church and in society."

"It helps us to seek responsible ways of reducing the enemy images that isolate and separate us from the gift of communion with God and with one another," he said. "As citizens of Christ's kingdom rooted in God's forgiveness we are brought into life in communion with God in Christ and with one another. Walls of separation, isolation and imprisonment are broken down."

Former bishop of the Evangelical Methodist Church in Germany Dr. Walter Klaiber gave tribute to the JDDJ's signing earlier on Saturday, saying that the document, "frees people from the destructive compulsion to have to justify their own lives through success, performance or possessions, and from the fatal despair of thinking that for lack of such self-justification, their life is a failure and without value and meaning."

Klaiber continued, "We must thus spell out - with the successful and the unsuccessful, with the self-satisfied and those doubting and despairing of themselves - what God's Yes to their life means for them: liberation for a dignified life that does not lie in the 'product' of our action or fail for lack of achievement, but is founded in God's love."

Augsburg's Lord Mayor Dr. Kurt Gribl also offered praise for the JDDJ, calling the "historic document" an "ecumenical milestone" in church history. An American celebration for the signing of the JDDJ was held earlier in the month at Old St. Patrick's Church in Chicago, with members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the United Methodist Church and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago in participation.