AN EPIPHANY HOMILY
There is an icon by Redemptorist Brother Richard Maidwell that has come to symbolize for me one way of expressing the meaning and purpose of interreligious dialogue. It shows Jesus and Siddhartha – that is to say, the Christ and the Buddha, the Anointed One and the Enlightened One – embracing one another like long lost brothers.
The feast of the Epiphany when we celebrate the revelation of the mystery that “the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Eph 3:6), strikes me as an especially appropriate time to reflect on the meaning of interreligious dialogue, to think about our relation to people of other faiths.
The author of the letter to the Ephesians tells us that in former generations the great mystery of God’s love for all peoples was not made known to humankind (Eph 3:5). It was only gradually that the people of Israel came to understand that the reason God chose them was not to reward them for their accomplishments, but to make them a light to the nations, that God’s salvation might reach to the ends of the earth (Is 49:6).
But even the prophets who proclaimed the universality of God’s love continued to think that it was only through the people of Israel, only through the splendor of Jerusalem, that God’s light could shine on the world. As far as Isaiah is concerned, the world’s peoples are all shrouded in darkness. If the Gentiles are to walk in light, it will have to be in the light that shines forth from Jerusalem, the Jerusalem to which they will then bring their wealth in thanksgiving (Is 60:1-6).
In his story of Wise Men from the East, Matthew picks up on Isaiah’s poetic vision. These Magi observed the star—the light—of the child who has been born king of the Jews and have come to Jerusalem to pay him homage. The chief priests and scribes, however, send them off to Bethlehem, where they find the child, worship him, and return home (Matt 2:1-12).
Isaiah and Matthew are major contributors to the evolution in Israel’s understanding of what it means to be God’s chosen people. To appreciate this development, all you have to do is compare their teaching with that of the author of Deuteronomy. As the Israelites are about to enter the Promised Land inhabited by other peoples, Moses commands them to “Break down their altars, smash their pillars, hew down their sacred poles, and burn their idols with fire” (Deut 7:5).
Unlike Moses, Isaiah and Matthew do not call for the annihilation of nations whose ways of believing and living differ from their own. Rather they describe a world in which the enlightened Gentile nations will bring their wealth to Jerusalem, in which Wise Men from the East kneel down and pay homage to Jesus. Annihilation has given way to submission.
But is that where it is to end? Or is there room for a further evolution in our understanding of how to regard other religions and treat other believers? Is it possible to think that just as annihilation gave way to submission, so submission, in turn, will give way to a mutual embrace between Christianity and the great religions of the East?
Absolutely.
It is already happening, thanks, in large measure, to such great monastic interreligious pioneers as Henri Le Saux, who took the Indian name Abhishiktananda, Bede Griffiths, Thomas Merton, and to the Second Vatican Council’s implicit approval of their experience and teaching.
In its 1965 Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Vatican II took a giant step forward by affirming that “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all [peoples]” (Nostra Aetate, 2).
That sounds a lot more like offering an embrace than demanding submission.
Pope John Paul II has not only expanded the teaching of Vatican II on interreligious dialogue; he put it into practice through countless dramatic gestures of love and reverence for the adherents of other religions. One of his most publicized gestures was the interreligious summit he held in Assisi in 1986. Four years later, in his encyclical on the Church’s missionary mandate, he recalled that summit and said it was meant to confirm his conviction that “every authentic prayer is prompted by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in every human heart” (Redemptoris Missio, 29).
Admittedly, the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and of recent Popes are grounded in the conviction that the definitive revelation of the mystery of God’s love for all people took place in Jesus Christ. But to affirm that Jesus is the Son of God and universal Savior is not to deny that God is also revealed in other peoples, other religions. We can reverence, love, and learn from them—learn from them and then, like the Wise Men from the East, return home by another road (Matt 2:11-12).
That little detail in Matthew’s story—that the Wise Men returned home by another road—perfectly describes the experience of many Christian monastics who have become familiar with contemplative practices of other religions, whether through face-to-face meetings or by reading and study. That has certainly been my experience, and I know many of you have had that experience as well. In our encounters with Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, we have discovered a spiritual wisdom and spiritual practices that led us back home, though by a different road, that led us to appreciate more deeply—or perhaps to discover for the first time—the richness of our own Christian tradition of prayer and contemplation. Seeing the Spirit of God at work in the followers of other spiritual traditions opened our eyes to the ways God’s Spirit is at work in us and among us. We began to hear the familiar words of the prophets and of Jesus in ways that made our earlier understanding of them seem paltry by comparison.
When we embrace the wisdom and truth to be found in other religious traditions, we return home by taking another road. It may also be true to say that for some Christians, monastics included, at some point in their lives, embracing the wisdom and truth of another religious tradition is the only way they can go home at all. Thomas Merton spoke for many contemporary Catholics when he wrote in his Asian Journal,
I am convinced that communication in depth, across the lines that have hitherto divided religious and monastic traditions, is now not only possible and desirable, but important for the destinies of [people in the] Twentieth-Century. . . . I think that we have now reached a stage of (long-overdue) religious maturity at which it may be possible for someone to remain perfectly faithful to a Christian and Western monastic commitment, and yet to learn in depth from, say, a Buddhist or Hindu discipline and experience. I believe that some of us need to do this in order to improve the quality of our own monastic life and even to help in the task of monastic renewal. (see Asian Journal, “Monastic Experience and East-West Dialogue," pp 311-317).
The mystery we celebrate today is great and wonderful indeed. We are all fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. One way to give thanks for that mystery is to extend to our brothers and sisters of other faiths, other cultures, the loving embrace in which God enfolds us all, and then to return home rejoicing, enriched by a wonderful exchange
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