December 15, 2013.
Dear Friends,
We will gather together for our Badaliya and Islands of Peace Institute Faith
Sharing on Sunday, December 15, 2013 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 encourage Interfaith relations and pray together
for peace and reconciliation in the Middle East and especially in the Holy Land.
For Christians the liturgical year is defined by the events in the life of Christ
beginning with the celebration of the birth of Jesus that we call the Nativity.
We begin this new Church year with the Advent season of four weeks before Christmas
with a time of prayer and reflection, of quiet waiting in expectation. This
invitation to wait is not only difficult for us as a high speed culture of instant
messaging but it also challenges our basic impatient human nature. In this season
we are preparing our hearts to receive the "Incarnation," Jesus, the
hope for new life, and the promise that we may each give birth to God within
us and in our world. This notion of "God with us, Emmanuel," and the
indwelling spirit of God within each of us recalls Louis Massignon's research
on the life and spiritual writings of the 10th century SUFI mystic of Islam
known as al-Hallaj. He was known as a love mystic who referred to the center
of the human heart where the inviolable spirit of God dwells. He called this
the "virgin point" and Massignon connected this image to the Virgin
Mary. (See ch.7 "The Eternal Feminine: Mary and the Virgin Heart"
in Dialogues with Saints and Mystics: In the Spirit of Louis Massignon.
KNP.2002.)
In Advent we are called to reflect on the many stories found in the Gospels
about the visit to Mary by an angel of God, called the "Annunciation",
and her "Visitation" to her elderly cousin Elizabeth who the angel
tells us is in her sixth month of pregnancy. Elizabeth will be the mother of
John the Baptist. There are stories of angels calling shepherds in the fields,
"Kings" from the East who are guided by a heavenly star, and many
others. We hear these stories every year and yet as we take the time to enter
into their mysterious depth of meaning in our lives, they take on a rich texture
of purpose and direction. They call us to return with patience, humility and
love back to God with open minds and hearts.
Louis Massignon believed that the Virgin Mary holds the key to reconciliation
between all three Abrahamic faith traditions. She is a "daughter of Abraham"
a young Jewish woman whose "Yes" to God gave birth to Jesus, to Christianity
and to the second most revered Prophet in Islam. It is her intense faith in
the One God of Abraham that allows her to accept the invitation made to her
by an angel, that Christian tradition identifies as the Archangel Gabriel. The
majority of interpreters of the Qur'an also name the Archangel Gabriel
as the spirit that appears to Mary, named Maryam in Islamic tradition. Christians
will recognize many figures mentioned in the Gospels that also appear in the
Qur'an and as many miraculous events. Islam's reverence for Mary is
almost as strong as Catholic and Orthodox Christians.
Surah 19 in the Qur'an begins with the prayer of the Prophet Zechariah
for a successor to his role as preacher of God's message and guardian of
the child Mary. His prayer for a successor was answered in the miraculous birth
of his son, John, by Zechariah's wife who was known to be barren. In the
Qur'an there are many facets of Mary's life that are not found in
the Gospels. One of them is that her mother dedicated her to a life of prayer
in the Temple, placing her under the guadianship of the prophet Zechariah. In
the Qur'an Mary is mentioned as one of two exemplary women who lived before
the Prophet Muhammad, and the Prophet mentions her as one of the four greatest
of all women. The other three were Aysa, the wife of the Pharoah, his own wife,
Khadija, and his own daughter, Fatima.
"Massignon prayed to Christ for help in understanding Islam and in convincing
Christians to approach their Muslim brothers [and sisters] with a more evangelical
spirit. Among the chief co-sufferers and participants in the passion of Christ,
Massignon placed the Virgin Mary, 'the perfect daughter of Abraham, the
mother of an innocent son who was condemned to death, the Queen of the Seven
Sorrows'."(Bassetti-Sani Louis Massignon: Christian Ecumenist
1974 Franciscan Herald Press. p.60)
He found in Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, and revered in the
Shi'a community in Islam, an image of another "Queen of Sorrows".
Fatima was known as the "mother of Imams." As the Prophet's only
surviving child she was the wife of the fourth Sunni Muslim Imam, Ali, who was
considered by the Shi'a community as the first legitimate Imam since he
was the cousin of Muhammad and therefore a member of the family. Fatima was
the mother of Hasan and Husayn, whose martyrdom at Karbala in 680 CE is the
defining event in the history of Shiism that we referred to in last month's
letter. It is marked annually during the tenth day of the month of Muharram,
known as Ashura, a day of mourning. "Like the Virgin Mary in Christian
tradition, Fatima is portrayed as a woman of sorrow, symbolizing the rejection,
disinheritance and martyrdom of her husband and sons....Fatima is the primal
mother figure, immaculate and sinless, the pattern for virtuous women, the object
of prayer and petition." (Esposito, John L.Islam the Straight Path 1991.
Oxford University Press. p. 112)
These images of Fatima remind us of our Christian images of Mary and caused
Massignon to write about them. In his efforts to heal the divisions between
Muslims and Christians and solve the dilemma for his Jewish friends of the Jewish
heritage of both Mary and her son, he turned to these two exemplary women as
images of nonviolence and love.
It is the birth of Love into our world of pain and suffering that we Christians
want to share with our Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters during this Advent
season of anticipation, along with the joy of celebrating new life during the
remainder of the Christmas Season.
May Peace be with you during this Holy Season and always.
Dorothy
(See www.dcbuck.com for all past Badaliya letters)