Interreligious dialogue is one of the most relevant issues of our time. It remains also an actual preoccupation of the Church in its mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of God throughout the world. As an experience, dialogue enhances our understanding of other religious traditions and beliefs, which results in mutual understanding and acceptance, leading to common action to promote human rights and peace. This process of dialogue is then experienced as an instance for sharing life and acting together so as to promote the project of the Creator. However, in this article, our preoccupation is to find out if there is a Christological experience in these interactions between different religious traditions and spiritual or humanistic beliefs. What does dialogue reveal to us about the person of Jesus Christ? Is Jesus Christ present in this togetherness of diversities?
We will broach this topic in three main points. First, we will deepen into the mystery of Jesus Christ through dialogue, second, we will see the possibility of encountering Jesus, present in the people professing different faiths; and finally, we shall reflect on “witnessing to Jesus” to other believers.
1. Deepening understanding
The experience of dialogue for us, is an opening to the mystery of Christ, his boundless love. This love impels us to go and reach out to other believers. Dialogue is then configured to the mystery of Christ, the Word of God (Logos) who was from the beginning (John 1:1) and has been in dialogue with cultures[1]. The same Word entered in dialogue with humanity by taking human flesh and sharing our human condition. Dialogue is also a revival of Christ’s earthly ministry that goes beyond the limits of Israel. Interreligious dialogue then makes us experience and understand deeply that the salvific mission of Jesus reaches all human beings, regardless of their belongingness to a religion or belief. This boundarylessness of Jesus’ salvific mission is to be read under the light of Mark’s pericope about the Cyrophoenician woman (Mk 7:24-30). Mark describes her as a gentile, born in the region of Phoenicia in Syria (7:26). She came and begged Jesus to drive the devil out of her daughter. Jesus’ first reaction to her sounds heavy as he said: “Let us first feed the children. It isn’t right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (7:27). Right away, we may say that at this level, Jesus' ministry was still understood as restricted to the children of Israel. However, the woman’s aspiration was high, although she is a gentile. Her reaction to Jesus proved her greater faith as she said: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s leftovers” (7:28). The Woman’s faith has given to the surrounding a new understanding that, even the gentiles need to be reached by Jesus’s salvific ministry. Jesus then accepted his healing power act on her daughter. Israel, therefore, is no longer the sole beneficiary of the salvation brought by Jesus. Everyone is part of those for whose salvation Jesus took the human body.
Interreligious dialogue then is a sign of Jesus’ unconditional love and his unicity in salvation. Through experience, it makes us understand that the members of other religious traditions and beliefs are also saved by Jesus, and that Christ is close to us as he is to them[2]. Nostra Aetate explains that we all form one community, since we all stem from the one stock which God created to people to the entire earth, and also because all share common destiny, namely God (N.A. no.1). Dialogue makes us “reach the religious experience of others, discover the hidden elements of the grace”[3] of God in Jesus. It has us grasp the deeper meaning of salvation through Jesus, the unique savior. Vatican II, in Gaudium et Spes, clearly states that Christians have been made partners in the paschal mystery, and that they will go forward, strengthened by hope, to the resurrection. However, there is a strong stress that all this, hold true not for Christians only, but also for all men of good will in whose hearts grace is active invisibly (GS. 22). Lumen Gentium also explains that the plan of salvation includes those who acknowledge the creator, in the first place among whom the Muslims ( LG chap. 2, No 15). The experience of dialogue results in a vivid understanding of what God has revealed to us in Jesus Christ and the living teachings of the Church.
2. Encountering Jesus
We came to conclude that interreligious dialogue opens us to a deeper understanding of Christ’s mystery. This understanding is a certainty that Christ is present in other religions and beliefs, and more again, he is present in individuals belonging to these. We are convinced that the mystery of Christ is present in these traditions although “ it remains unknown by their members[4]. It is the continuation of the mystery of incarnation through which Jesus Christ has in a certain way united himself to each human person (GS 22).
Henceforth, if Jesus is present in the person of other believers, interreligious dialogue is then a special context of encounter. We encounter Jesus, the unique savior, present in individuals belonging to other religions and beliefs. The same Jesus we bear in our hearts, the same we encounter in the Word of life, in the sacraments of the Church, is the same we encounter in dialogue with other religions and beliefs. He is united to all human beings regardless of their religious belongingness. Interreligious dialogue makes us then experience a deeper spirituality that consists in contemplating the Holy Trinity in human persons.
3. Silent witness
Deeper understanding of Christ’s mystery enables us to seek and encounter him in everything, and the encounter makes us his true witnesses in this pluralistic world. While keeping our own identity and respecting the identity of others, we silently witness to Jesus Christ among them, without attempting to proselytize. This silent witness is concretized through a dialogue of presence, a “dialogue between ‘brothers’, a dialogue of ‘friends’, a dialogue of fellow ‘pilgrims’, a dialogue where we challenge each other not by words, but by actions”[5]. This silent witness presupposes a Christocentric life that enables Christians to share Jesus’ love to other believers, and have them experience the Kingdom of God established by Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of peace, where “Jesus is All and is in all” (Col. 3:11).
Given all these points, interreligious dialogue is an experience of the boundless love of Christ who sends us to be with others; it is Christ-centered. Jesus makes us experience his mystery of salvation, graciously gives himself to us, and enables us to witness to him. He is truly present in the togetherness of diversities.
[1] Saying of Father Luigino Marchioron, s.x., a biblical Scholar.
[2] JACQUES DUPUIS, SJ., Jesus Christ at the Encounter of World Religions. Faith Meets Series. (New York:Orbis Books, 1991), 128
[3] Idem. p.142
[4] Idem., 128.
[5] IAN LATHAM, Charles de Foucault (1858-1916): Silent Witness for Jesus in The Face of Islam., in Catholics in Interreligious Dialogue. Monasticism, Theology and Spirituality., ed. By Antony O’Mahony & Peter Bowe, OSB, 2006. P. 65.
