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Dilatato Corde 6:1
January - June, 2016 
Decorative metal religious plate with names of Allah
Michael L. Fitzgerald PRAISE THE NAME OF THE lORD MEDITATIONS ON THE MOST BEAUTIFUL NAMES OF GOD Bishop Michael Fitzgerald wrote Praise the Name of the Lord for dialogue practitioners, intending it to be a prayer book. I read it respectfully, as Bishop Michael has credentials and experience in the field of Muslim/Christian dialogue beyond those of any Christian I know. We met several times when he was Secretary of the Pontifical Council of Interreligious Dialogue. Before his retirement in October 2012, he was Apostolic Nuncio in Egypt and Delegate to the League of Arab States for six years. When I first read this book, I thought the author's intention was to promote dialogue with Muslims by using the 99 names of God. On second reading, I realized that this text takes us further, deeper and steeper into the realization of the dialogue of religious experience, “where persons, rooted in their own religious traditions, share their spiritual riches, for instance with regard to prayer and contemplation, faith and ways of searching for God or the Absolute” (Dialogue and Proclamation, no. 42). This book proposes a method for this encounter. From the 99 names of God embedded in the Qur’an, the author selects 60. He then clusters these names into eight sets using a template of quotes from the Qur’an and from the First and New Testaments of the Christian Bible. In his introduction, Bishop Michael writes, The divine Names act at the same time as a bridge and an invitation. They act as a bridge in so far as they establish communication between God and human beings. God expresses Himself through His Names: through them we can go to Him. . . . These names also constitute an invitation, first of all to praise: call on Him; celebrate His praises; praise the Name of the Lord. They also invite to imitation. Islamic tradition speaks of clothing oneself with the habits of God, or with the divine attributes. The invitation is to contemplate the Names of God, so that if God is Just, we also should be just; if God is Merciful, then we too should show mercy; if God is Faithful, then faithfulness is our duty also. In the Gospel we find a similar invitation, or rather, a command: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). The list used as a basis for the reflections presented here is reproduced in the appendix that was published in Arabic and French in the review of the Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies. See “Les Noms’ divins,” Etudes Arabes, n. 20, pp 44-45. The cluster of themes sets out a meditation practice that uses the Names of God in a way similar to that put forward in the Ignatian Exercises. Bishop Michael provides the sequence and also gives us the citations from the Qur’an and Christian Bible for our meditation. Eight themes are selected and skillfully edited: God the Creator: We can state quite roundly that for us everything starts with creation, or rather with the Creator God. We are invited to place ourselves before this God with thanksgiving in our hearts for all that he has done, and is doing, for us. At the same time, we can be aware of a possible twofold reaction. On the one hand we become conscious of our own weakness, of the fact that we are not the masters of our own existence. We realize that we are radically dependent on God. On the other hand, we can appreciate our own dignity, which is founded on the will of God to create us, and also on the role that he has entrusted to us in the midst of creation. The Transcendent God: While God is the Manifest or the Patent (al-ẓâhir) who makes himself known through His creation, he is also the Hidden or the Latent (al-bâṭin) who cannot be known fully.[1] We are invited to turn our own faces to the hidden face of the divinity, recognizing how different God is. Accordingly, the following meditation will be a reflection on divine transcendence, on the holiness of God. This should lead to praise addressed to God for what he is, and not for what he does. It should lead to a form of prayer that is entirely disinterested, that is not aimed at obtaining something from God. Yet we may discover that God, without our asking, will shower his gifts upon us, for he is the Living One, our true source of Life. God with us. God, the Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible, God, the Almighty, even if he is the Most High, the Holy One, the transcendent God, does not remain remote from his creation. He is close to us; he sees everything; he knows us intimately. It is good to strengthen this awareness of the proximity of the One who is truly Emmanuel, God-with-us. The God of Goodness and Mercy: The Creator God, the God Most High, is also the God-with-us. He is All-Knowing; he knows of what we are made; he knows our weaknesses. But the Almighty God is also mighty in love. He is a God of tenderness and mercy, a God always ready to grant pardon. When we reflect on the pardon of God, which is always offered, or rather on God who pardons, we make the strange discovery that this God is also a God of anger. His anger is directed towards those who are stubbornly proud and who do not admit that they are sinners. His pardon is for those who return to him. God, Lord and King: The pendulum swings once more between the immanence and the transcendence of God. From the God of tenderness and goodness we turn to the God of majesty, the Lord and King. God the Guide: We are called to serve our King. Disciples of Jesus, we have accepted to follow him. We must continue along the road, but often we ask ourselves what we are to do. The more we advance along this road, the more we feel the need of a guide. In fact it is God who is our guide. As in the past he led His people, so today he lead us. In his light we see the light. The God who is Generous and Faithful: The God who guides us is not ungenerous; he is not stingy. He does not want to give us only “sufficient grace.” He wants to shower his gifts on us, as he did upon Mary, “the highly favored one.” The All-mighty God is mighty in goodness. So we are invited to what Saint Ignatius of Loyola calls contemplatio ad amorem, contemplation of the love that flows from the Lord, To that is added a reflection on the Faithful God, a God on whom we can really count. God, our Peace: How should these reflections on the Beautiful Names of God be concluded? One way is to meditate on God who constitutes himself our reward, God, our Peace, God the First and the Last, God, the Eternal and Everlasting One. This will be an anticipation of our final destiny where we are invited to enter into the fullness of God. It is a meditation which can sustain us while we are still in via, on the way. This book is a gift for those of us who are involved in dialogue and need nurturing to be fit and fine for this most urgent work of our times. Bishop Michael did the tedious homework and invites us to use this book as prayer. “These texts are proposed not as an object of study, but in order to lead to meditation and prayer” (p. 21). He has used these texts with actual dialogue groups in North Africa, Jerusalem, and Egypt. It’s a serious undertaking to engage in dialogue of experience at this level of the heart. To give the reader a taste of this kind of meditation, he ends his introduction with an actual lectio on the God who reveals himself to us using Q 20:8-14, Q 1:6, Q 20:24, which contain the Islamic tradition Moses, and Exodus 3:1-7.9-14; Is 1:3-18; and Luke 1:38, in which we find Christian references to Moses, Samuel, and Mary. Readers will benefit from Bishop Michael’s facility with Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. The citations are fully available in a readable translation that serves slow meditative prayer (lectio divina). Realizing that what I was doing was more than just writing another book review, I took a few days in my monastic cloister to immerse myself in this method of meditation on the Names of God. Since this book is built on the experience of actual dialogue groups and Bishop Michael’s own prayer life, the sequence that is given in the book matters. I started with the first chapter of the book, which deals with the names of the Creator God. I found a handsome copy of the Qur’an in our monastic library. But after a short while I felt that I did not need the full text. I have found from experience that the full text of sacred scripture from another tradition can be daunting and distancing rather than inviting and lingering. I was mindful of a caution, a double pitfall to be avoided: “Care must be taken not to give a false interpretation to the meaning of the sacred books of other religions. An effort has been made here to avoid a Christian reading of the Qur’an which would try to eliminate all the differences. The texts are to be allowed to speak for themselves. At the same time, it is necessary to remain faithful to one’s own tradition” (p. 17). Therefore, I simply did lectio on the texts provided by Bishop Michael’s book: He provides eighteen passages from the Qur’an ( 59:24, 2:117, 2:117, 10:4, 35:1, 39:46, 96:1-2, 35:3, 23:115, 55:14, 23:12-14, 22:5; 40:67, 2:28-30, 51:58, 5:56-57, 20:131, 55:14); sixteen passages from the First Testament (Gen 1:1-24, Gen 1:1, 1:3,1:4, 1:8, 2:19-20, 1:22, 1:26, 1:27, 2:7; Ps 8 (that begins and ends with the refrain, “O Lord, our Sovereign, How majestic is your name in all the earth!), Ps 104, Ps 103; Ex. 16; Is 44:24; and 45:18); and five passages from the New Testament: Rom 1:20, 9:20-21; Matt 6: 26-30; John 1: 1-3; and Col 1:15-20. When I paused and reflected on the citations from the Qur’an, I heeded the admonition that reading these texts will demand an effort; it will require that time be set aside for the purpose. I could be said that, like Moses, the reader has to make a detour. Meditating on the Names of God also demands a certain degree of purification, for one is approaching a holy place; one is coming nearer to God. One has to accept to remain in the place, even if at it seems rather like a desert. Shoes or sandals have to be taken off, as a sign of respect, but also as a sign of the desire to remain in the presence of the Lord, since barefoot, one is not really ready to leave (p.23). A provocative paragraph concludes this chapter: What conclusion can be drawn from these texts? We should let ourselves be filled with gratitude, for the gift of life, for our own existence, for the whole creation that surrounds us and of which we form part. If our sensitivity to the unity of creation grows, then we shall be more inclined to a feeling of confidence and to a desire to give thanks to God in whose hands we are. My own meditation is a work in progress. Though I’m formed by and whole heartedly believe in my Catholic Creator God, I’ve never made a retreat on that faith claim. I texted Rev. Vivian Gruenfelder of Shasta Abbey and asked her if Buddhism had a myth that is parallel to our Genesis texts. She replied that Buddhism has no creation myth: The Buddha said we can't really know how everything came to be, and hence it was a question not useful to ask. However, Hinduism has a creation myth of some sort. I don't know much about Hinduism, but I do know there is a triad of gods, Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu, and they are creator, preserver, and destroyer, though not necessarily in that order. I'm afraid I can't say more than that. It is probably too sweeping to say that Eastern religions don't have creation myths, but you can certainly say that Buddhism doesn't. Knowing this difference that doesn’t divide our friendship I know that in the wee hours of the dawn I’m “kneeling” without my shoes on in my cell and she is sitting in the silence of her temple with her sandals outside of the sacred space. It will take several weeks for my long lingering meditation on these texts. Then I can return to Bishop Michael’s book to pick up and read the seven remaining chapters. This book invites readers to meditate and be moved to pray. Praise The Name of the Lord. [1] Cf. EI2 art. Al-ẒAHIR wa ‘l-BAṬIN, where it is said that these Names signify that God is both the Outward and the Inward reality. |
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