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Dilatato Corde 6:1
January - June, 2016 
MONKS AND MUSLIMS IV A fourth meeting of Catholic monastic men and women with Shi’a Muslims took place in the Iranian cities of Qom and Mashhad, May 9-14, 2016. The host for this year’s meeting was Dr. Mohammad Ali Shomali, Director of the International Institute for Islamic Studies in Qom and the Head of the Islamic Center of England. DIMMID’s dialogue with Iranian Shi’a Muslims began in 2011 as a sequel to three Christian-Shi’a Muslim dialogues that were organized by Dr. Shomali and Abbot Timothy Wright (Ampleforth). Those meetings took place in the UK in 2003, 2005, and 2007. The four specifically “Monastic/Muslim” gatherings that followed were held in Rome (September 2011); in Qom and Isfahan (September 2012); in Assisi and Rome (October 2014), and this year in Qom and Mashhad. A fifth such gathering is being planned for September 2017 and will take place at the monastery of the Missionary Benedictine Sisters of Tutzing in Nairobi, Kenya. The theme of this year’s dialogue was “The Dignity of Being Human.” On the three full days that were spent in Qom, each of the morning sessions was devoted to presenting and discussing two papers, one by a Shi’a Muslim, the other by a Catholic monastic. The afternoons were taken up by visits to museums, shrines, and a few of the 300 or so educational institutions that comprise the Qom Seminary whose students and faculty number 85,000 (75,000 Iranian; 10,000 international). These visits usually involved a presentation by the director of the institution, a discussion, and a meal. This collection of photos will give a sense of the different venues and activities of the week. The six morning presentations plus a guest lecture can be accessed by clicking on the presenter’s name: An Islamic Perspective on Human Dignity The Dignity of Being Human: A Christian/Benedictine Approach to Human Rights The Rights and Responsibilities of Men and Women of Faith The Rights and Responsibilities of Men and Women of Faith Spirituality in the Shi’a Tradition Sr. Gertrude Fleick (read by Abbot Timothy Wright) Benedictine Spirituality and its Mystical Dimension: Gertrude the Great of Helfta (1256-1301/2) Foundations and Opportunities for Cooperation On Friday, May 13, our hosts took us by plane to Mashhad, about 1000 kilometers northeast of Tehran. Mashhad is Iran’s second largest city and the site of the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza, the eight Imam of the Twelver Shi’ites. It is the largest mosque in the world by dimension and the second largest by capacity. The huge complex covers about 150 acres and contains, in addition to the shrine, a museum of the Qur’an, a library, four seminaries, a cemetery, the Razavi University of Islamic Sciences, a dining hall for pilgrims, vast prayer halls, and seven courtyards. The size of the shrine is now ten times larger than it was before the 1979 revolution. In addition to a staff of 2,000, there are about 18,000 volunteers who help to welcome and orient the more than 10,000,000 pilgrims who visit the shrine each year. There was unanimous agreement that our visit to the shrine was the highpoint of this year’s gathering, not so much because of its size and artistic and architectural splendor, but because of the throngs of praying pilgrims who congregate there day and night and are such inspiring exemplars of faith and devotion. On Saturday, May 14, we were received by the Shrine’s Director of Non-Iranian Pilgrims' Affairs, Mr. Javad Hasheminejad, who arranged for our visit to be documented by the Shrine’s publicity department and televised. The English version of that newscast can be accessed here. In his reflections on this year’s gathering Abbot Timothy, who initiated these dialogues and has been deeply involved in all seven, wrote: Each of us has to realize that in this dialogue we are on a journey into the heart of the other. In that heart each of us will find the love that animates lives and the foundation stone of our dialogue with each other. Our aim in these meetings is to come closer to the divine spirit inspiring each of us, albeit in different ways. For this to truly happen there has to be a clear boundary between academic scholarship and mutual enlightenment through the spirituality each of us believes and lives. The spirituality of both the Rule of Benedict and the Holy Qur’an are firmly based on the revealed Word of God, given to each in different ways. Both Muslim and Benedictine see God’s Word as the essence of their spirituality. The hours prescribed for daily lectio divina in the Rule of Benedict make it abundantly clear that the prayerful and contemplative reading of Sacred Scripture is the core element of daily Benedictine life. Likewise the regular recitation of the Holy Qur’an by which God speaks to the faithful Muslim, is as real and effective in building the spiritual life of the Muslim. For both of us God speaks directly through the Word—an essential element in the growth of our spiritual intimacy with the One God, a challenging statement for both of us to affirm and engage. This immediate contact with God through the Word is as essential for our daily life as it is for those precious moments of our dialogue of spirituality. Once this contact with God through the Word has been realized, we will see something of what Christian de Chergé meant when he spoke to the Cistercian General Chapter in 1993. Doing lectio divina with the Qur’an, he said, was a practice that “has allowed me, as the Christian that I am, to have an authentic spiritual experience in and through what others have received as properly their own by the sake of cultivating within them a taste for God: the call to prayer, the spontaneous prayerful utterance, the act of sharing” (Christian Salenson, Christian de Chergé: A Theology of Hope, p. 65). His writings, more than those of any other author, suggest that followers of the Rule of Benedict are invited to listen to the Word of God presented in the Holy Qur’an. Representing DIMMID at this year’s gathering were Abbot Primate Notker Wolf (Rome), Abbot Timothy Wright (Ampleforth, UK), William Skudlarek (Collegeville MN, USA), Daniel Pont (En Calcat, France), Lorraine Victorsen (Brisbane, Australia), Maximilian Musindai (Tigoni, Kenya), Godefroy Raguenet de Saint-Albin (Aiguebelle, France), and Dr. Corinna Mühlstedt, a Lutheran theologian and journalist stationed in Rome. Patricia Cowley (Lisle IL, USA) and Gertrude Feick (Mt. Angel OR, USA) were also to be part of the delegation but were unable to travel to Iran. |
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