MERCY AND COMMUNITY:
Monastic-Muslim Dialogue
Assisi and Rome, October 17-22, 2014
Our encounter in Assisi was blessed by the spiritual presence of Saint Francis and the hospitality of the brothers of Bose at the monastery of San Masseo. Two years after our memorable visit to Iran, what we especially appreciated—over and above the presentations we heard—was the time to engage in more informal sharing, to be present at one another’s prayers, to walk together to San Damiano and the Basilica, and—last, but certainly not least—to gather together at table and partake of the delicious meals the brothers prepared for us. These expressions of hospitality and community sound very ordinary—and indeed they are—but I believe they are the true ground on which we journey together, a ground that is receptive to more “spiritual” manifestations and that is especially relevant to our reflection on shaping community. The new means of communication provide us with marvelous tools to build communion . . . or to foment global religious terror. But even if we make the best possible use of these media to communicate with one another, to set up discussion groups, or to facilitate the organization of a movement, they still fall short of a fully human, face-to-face encounter.
One premise of our meetings is the acknowledgment of the divine initiative that brings people together and of our own experience of the joy of having already been gathered together by Him who calls us to share in a community of dialogue and friendship. In one of the first formal presentations, Dr. Javadi pointed out that the difference between society and community is that community is the result of God’s initiative and that it realizes is essential nature by becoming a community of worshipers in obedience to the prophets’ call to respond to God in prayer.
On the following day, when we gathered for Sunday Mass, we heard the words of Jesus, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Matt 22:21). For me, those words were a powerful echo of the distinction Dr. Javadi made between society and community, and also of the divine initiative that provided this significant but certainly unplanned “input” to our dialogue. Jesus’ words, it should be noted, do not provide a turnkey solution. Rather, they are a summons to articulate and distinguish the political and religious dimensions of human society. Certainly the diversity of our backgrounds shows us that there is no single way to do this. We cannot ignore the differences between Belgian secularism, French laïcité, and the religiously sanctioned democracy of the United States, nor the sharp contrast of all of these with Iran, where religion (Shi’a Islam) is at the heart of the social and political structures. This diversity certainly contributed to the richness our discussions.
“Spice” was not lacking at our meeting in Assisi. In addition to the excellent spicy dishes prepared by the brothers, there were some spicy moments in our discussions as well. The conversation became especially animated in response to the statement of one of the monastic participants who said that his spontaneous reaction to someone who told him he had converted to Islam would be “Congratulations!” His remark brought up the very sensitive point of conversion (dramatic for many people throughout the world) and raised the question of our relation to Truth. The trust that had developed among us helped us to recognize that even if believers are devoted to, “possessed” by, and witnessing to Truth, they cannot pretend to own it, imagining that they are somehow able to grasp this attribute of the Revealing God in a complete and exclusivist way, be it as individual persons, or even as a community. That being the case, “Congratulations!” could be understood as a way of affirming those who believe they have received a gift—Islam in this case—from God. As I heard it, this “Congratulations!” was the expression of a faith confident enough to let God be God, to let God lead each human being to a greater openness to Truth in a unique and personal way (“no compulsion in religion” says the Qur’an 2,256), all the while being fully aware that the way people sense they are being led by God is deeply related to their encounter with a witnessing community (“You are the best community” [Qur’an 3,110]; “You are the light of the world” [Matt 5:14]). Interpreted in this way, “Congratulations!” is a very personal and sincere statement.
When we reflect upon community and our sense of belonging, we inevitably draw a line between insiders and outsiders. Such boundaries give us the comfort of a reference and the satisfaction offered by a binary mode of reading the human world: “in” or “out”; “with us” or “not with us”—which so easily turns into “against us.” Insecurity can blind us to the in-between zone and the complexity of the real world and of the human heart. We even disregard the antidotes that our own traditions offer us to fight against this laziness of spirit. Within the Christian tradition, the words of Jesus “Whoever is not against us, is with us” (Mark 9:40) and his famous, but rarely observed, command “Love your enemies” (Matt 5:44) radically turn the boundaries inside out. His words urge us to build bridges precisely in those situations where mere human reasoning and our religious convictions so often tell us that we have to erect walls and barriers. An especially valuable gift we share in our group of friends is the knowledge that walls do not reach up to heaven.
One of the presentations offered a more complex model of community than that of the Manichean circle of insisters and outsiders. This alternate pattern of belonging consists of concentric circles. The innermost circle is the community of those who, in addition to faith, are bound together by kinship. Then come the circles of friends, neighbors, acquaintances, etc. The outermost and largest circle encompasses the whole of humanity. Muslims and Christians share the precious vision of a universal horizon for their communities. Though we may have different ways of interpreting this horizon, we can together confess that we are all created and united in one human family, devoted to the proclamation of God’s unity and uniqueness (tawhid; see also the concept of mithaq). Christians understand this unity to be recapitulated in Christ, and they look to its fulfilment in the eschatological communion of saints.
In this perspective, it may help to consider community as an evolving form that combines varying degrees of “intensity” and “extension.” The “intensity” of a community involves conversion, formation, the strengthening of bonds, purification of heart—the latter a traditionally monastic expression. Time is an essential element of a community’s “intensity,” and faith is spoken of as a journey. “Extension” refers to reaching out to others, da’wa, evangelization, testimony, etc.; it is also a time-related parameter. While we may instinctively think that intensity is more important and fundamental than extension (since, for instance, a lack of a “spiritual life” soon weakens and even corrupts testimony), we also have to admit that the reverse is also true: extension verifies intensity.
Monastic life clearly chooses to invest in intensity, convinced that the history of humanity is written by Saint John of the Cross (not to mention Jesus!) or Imam ‘Ali b. Mûsâ al-Ridâ Muhammad no less—or, indeed, far more—than Alexander the Great or Napoleon, despite their more obvious roles on the stage of history. Seeking to correspond fully to our human vocation calls us to authenticity and coherency (intensity), but in this journey of humanization, the self—increasing revealing its relational nature as person-in-communion—expands towards others and ultimately reaches communion with the whole of humanity, the whole of creation (extension).
Still, the temptation is always there for monks and monastic communities to forget the ecstatic dimension of their way of life and to entrench themselves in spiritual self-complacency. Dr. Shomali explained that the Islamic position regarding monasticism (see Qur’an 57,27 and also the famous hadith, “no monasticism in Islam”) is fundamentally a warning against cutting oneself off from the life of the larger community. The temptation to retreat into isolation is something we and all Christian communities need to be aware of. Whether the reference be to ecclesiolae (churches in miniature) or to the Church at large, Christians are necessarily rooted in their environment (be it Christian or not), and “given” to it—an awareness that was particularly strong in the monastic community at Tibhirine in Algeria. The Church does not exist for its own sake but for others—that is, those who do not belong to the Christian community. It exists to be sign and servant of the unity of all people with one another and with God, a vision of the Church that emerged with particular clarity during the Second Vatican Council.
Our communities will always have to struggle against the demons of exclusivism, of “purity.” Popular wisdom advises people to ‘clean up your own backyard,” and Jesus enjoins his hearers to remove the plank from their own eye before they try to remove the speck of sawdust in their neighbor’s eye (Matt 7:3). There is a noble way of understanding and practicing the directive “to command what is just and forbid what is evil, (“Amr bil Ma'ruf wa Nahy an al Munkar”) and other injunctions to “fraternal correction” (another monastic expression), but is it not too often used to justify oppressive and aggressive policies? One of the reasons Jesus was perceived as such a threat by many among the Pharisees (the “Separates,” i.e. the “pure ones”) and other Jewish groups of his time was because he acted as the messenger who not only announced the good news of divine grace offered to all, but embodied that good news by associating with public sinners and prostitutes.
At the heart of the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus and of the Christian community is the mercy of God shown to the sinner. So it was from the very beginning. The first “pope,” the Apostle Peter, was a renegade. Jesus’ disciples fled at the time of his arrest. Like the first followers of Jesus, we too are invited to let our very weaknesses and failures become the channel for receiving the Strength to Love—the Jesus Spirit. Love beyond death, forgiveness that overcomes evil, is what creates community.
In our Benedictine tradition, monastic life solemnly begins when those desiring to enter the community are asked what is they are seeking. Their response is “The mercy of God and fellowship in this community.” In doing so, they proclaim that the only life sustaining principle of community is the divine bond of merciful love between its fallible, sinful members. We could hear an echo of this conviction in the honest acknowledgement of disappointments encountered in monastic community life. At the same time, we recognize that disappointment can also be a way of calling us back to our vocation, which demands constant effort and continual conversion. Becoming and being communities where mercy wells up and overflows is precisely the way monasteries contribute to the good of society. Their mission is to be places where Divine Mercy is received as a divine gift, offered to one’s brothers—or sisters—in the monastic community, and imparted to all in a spirit of poverty and sharing.
That might well be a good theme for a next encounter, inshâ’llah!
.jpg)
_Web.jpg)