May 20, 2012
Dear Friends,
We will gather together for our Badaliya Prayer on Sunday, May 20, 2012 from
3:00 pm to 4:30 pm at St. Pauls Church in Cambridge, in the small chapel located
in the Parish Center. Please join us in person or in spirit as we pray for peace
and reconciliation in the Middle East and especially in the Holy Land.
For these fifty days between our celebration of Easter and the Resurrection
of Christ and the Feast of Pentecost we have been invited by our Church to reflect
on the meaning of Lent and Easter for our own lives. Inevitably we are led to
the larger question of what the centuries of these annual experiences of Lent
and Easter have meant for the world and what they mean for our world today.
Perhaps by returning to the upper room hidden in the streets of Jerusalem where
the disciples gather in fear, and yet in hope in the promises of the Risen Lord,
we will find our own inspiration and hope. For those of us who have been to
the Old City of Jerusalem and visited the Parable house in the oldest remaining
Christian village in the West Bank called Taybeh, the biblical images come alive
again in our visual imagination. Are we not waiting with the disciples for the
promised Holy Spirit and wondering with them what this would mean to them then,
and what it will mean for us now?
In the spirit of Louis Massignon's Badaliya this feast has the potential
to be a particularly poignant invitation to deepen our commitment to reaching
out in friendship and love to others including our Muslim and Jewish neighbors.
When the Holy Spirit of God entered dramatically into the hearts of the disciples
on that first Pentecost Jews from every nation were gathered in Jerusalem to
offer the first fruits of the annual harvest to God in a festival of thanksgiving,
called the Feast of Weeks. At that moment the first fruits of God's Holy
Spirit poured into the disciples filling them with the gifts they would need
to speak in every language and the courage to go into the world with a message
that would change the course of human history forever. Like the first disciples
we are called to continue the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing Jesus'
promise of the Kingdom of God into being, here and now.
In the context of our globalized world today and the way that we live in the
midst of extreme diversity of cultures and religions we have both unique challenges
and extraordinary opportunities. Can we see the Holy Spirit at work in our world
in the struggles for freedom, equality and justice, for peace and reconciliation,
for human rights and dignity right now in the Middle East and especially in
the Holy Land? The ways the spirit of the Badaliya has inspired communities
such as Deir Mar Musa in Syria and the Monks of Tibhirine in Algeria as well
as the Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus throughout the world living in the
midst of Islam are examples of the Holy Spirit at work that can leave us in
awe if we stop and pay attention.
Our Badaliya prayer has led us both to reach out to the growing Muslim community
here in the United States and to learn about Islam and also to find ways to
engage in interfaith sharing with our Muslim and Jewish neighbors. Through our
Badaliya prayer we were led to adopting a Partner Parish in Beit Sahour, Palestine.
The writings of Louis Massignon and Blessed Charles de Foucauld had to lead
us there. The Badaliya was established in the Middle East to encourage what
Louis Massignon saw as the "vocation" of the Christians who have lived
there since the time of Jesus to be witnesses of Christ's love for all
people. Christians in that neighborhood are increasingly threatened today and
their numbers diminished as so many leave seeking safety and opportunity. Therefore
let us pray for those who stay and those who leave and for the community of
Deir Mar Musa and our dear friend Fr. Paolo Dall'Oglio in Syria whose writings
we turn to for our reflection this month.
Fr. Paolo named the monastic community at Deir Mar Musa, al-Khalil, which
means Friend of God, and established it to create harmony between Muslims
and Christians and also to slow the emigration of Christians to the West. In
the Annex to his book, Amoureux de l'Islam: Croyant en Jésus,
Fr. Paolo describes the foundation of the charism of the community. He writes:
"There are men and women saints in every Church who, urged by the Holy
Spirit, desire to offer themselves with Christ for the Muslims. We are thinking
of Saint Francis of Assisi and of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. In the same way
we are aware that the vocation that characterizes us is constructed on the renewal
of religious life, especially in the Muslim context, that the Holy Spirit realized
in the life of Charles de Foucauld. Our vocation is also rooted in the intellectual
and spiritual depth, the serious dialogue, the science and wisdom of Louis Massignon,
based in the inculturation of his Christian faith and our own in the language,
civilization and spiritual experience of these countries and these peoples.
This has led us to found, with our Eastern sister Mary Kahil, the fraternity
of the Badaliya for men and women disciples of Jesus, before anything Eastern,
consecrated to manifest the love of Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, for the Muslims
and Islam."
May we be inspired on the Feast of Pentecost by the life chosen by our friends
at Deir Mar Musa and keep them in our constant prayers for their safety as they
face the uncertainty caused by the uprisings and unrest in Syria. With the urging
of the Holy Spirit may we live the spirit of the Badaliya ever more deeply finding
ways to build the bridges of peace and reconciliation here at home, in the Middle
East and especially in the Holy Land.
Peace to you,
Dorothy