May 4, 2025.
Dear Friends,
We will gather together remotely for our Badaliya and Peace Islands Institute faith sharing on Sunday, May 4. 2025 from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm. Please join us on Zoom, or in spirit, as we encourage Inter-faith relations and pray together for a peaceful resolution to the on-going bombing in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and an end to the on-going Israeli incursions by the IDF and settlers in the West Bank. We wait with hope for a peaceful transition to democracy in Syria as they negotiate with the diverse factions throughout the country after a long civil war. As violence continuous in far too many areas of the world may there finally be an end to war as a solution to conflict in the Ukraine, Haiti and the Sudan and so many others. Our prayers are on-going for all the victims of human-created violence as well as the increase of natural disasters due to climate change all over the world.
As we mourn the loss of Pope Francis and dedicate our gathering to prayers for his peaceful return to his eternal home, I want to share these eloquent messages from our dear friends of the Badaliya and members of the Peace Islands community:
"We were deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Pope Francis. Please accept our heartfelt condolences. He was a man whose compassion, humility, and commitment to peace left a profound mark on the world. His voice often reminded us of the values we all share — kindness, dignity, and care for one another — no matter our background or beliefs. We pray that he is granted eternal peace, and that you and all those mourning his loss find comfort and strength in this difficult time. Our thoughts are with you. With warmth and sympathy, Gulhan and Fatih"
"We are sending our deepest condolences to you and the St. Paul Church community on the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis. He was a man of faith with profound humility, compassion, and moral courage. His efforts to build bridges between faiths and advocate for peace, justice, and the dignity of all people have left a lasting legacy in the hearts of many, including us.We pray his legacy of mercy and unity continue to inspire, and may he be rewarded for the good he brought to the world. We are especially touched by the fact that he called for peace until his last breath. His Easter message was remarkable. With heartfelt sympathy, Esra and Ertugrul"
With the current threat to democratic values both here in the United States and in Israel, may our prayers give us the courage to speak truth to power and take appropriate actions to support all efforts to protect the precious gift of all human life that is a core value of all authentic religions and the only means to safety for all people, including our Jewish neighbors.
Christians have entered into an inspiring time in the liturgical calendar of the Church. These are fifty days before the close of the Easter season and the extraordinary event we call "Pentecost". This is the time called "Mystagogia" that allows time for deeper reflection on the experience of those many who received Baptism, First Communion and Confirmation into the Church at the Holy Saturday Easter Vigil. It is a special time to reflect on their unique spiritual journeys up to and through the Lenten Season and Easter celebration, and for us to do the same. We have experienced the spiritual and emotional roller coaster of events in the life of Christ during the Triduum called "Holy Week"; a final supper shared with Jesus' disciples, the betrayal through the grotesque use of a "kiss" by Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane, an arrest, a trial, physical abuse and the abandonment of Jesus by His disciples out of fear and despair leaving only a few women to witness His final Crucifixion; until the third day when Mary Magdalen became the first witness to the Resurrected Christ and the triumph of Easter Sunday morning.
Today we are invited to spend the remaining weeks of the Easter Season reflecting on the whole experience of this year's Holy Week, perhaps starting with the grueling scene of the Crucifixion and the rich tapestry of meanings of the central visual image of a Cross displayed above us in every Christian Church. Let us begin with the Gospel according to John19:23-24 that describes the four soldiers who had crucified Jesus as dividing up his garments so that each received an equal share. "Then they took his seamless garment and cast lots for it." The symbolic possibilities in this narrative are ripe for our imagination to discover deeper meaning for our reflection together remembering that the details in these narratives were purposely chosen to evoke those deeper meanings. An example might be to wonder at the choice of "four" soldiers dividing Jesus' garments equally; perhaps these four equally divided garments represent the image of the Divine Word reaching all four corners of the earth in the universality of the meaning of the word "catholic"? Then they cast lots to determine who would keep His tunic because it was "woven in one piece, without seam." Does that seamless garment remind us that all Christians were "Clothed with Christ" at our own baptism into the "seamless garment" of the Body of Christ? Or perhaps we are reminded of Jesus' own teaching recorded by the Apostle Paul that insists that in the eyes of the Divine, "There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus"? (Galatians 3:28)
This unity of a worldwide community of believers may feel very familiar to our Muslim friends whose Ummah, or worldwide community of Muslim believers, is so clearly seen at the annual Hajj when millions of white clad Muslim pilgrims gather around the Ka'aba in Mecca.
Let us move then to the Cross, a violent method of torture commonly inflicted on common criminals by the Roman authorities. Catholic churches traditionally prominently display the cross as a Crucifix with the Corpus, the body of Christ, graphically nailed to it for a reason. Is it so that we recognize how we frail human beings can abuse and condemn innocent lives? Or that those of us in power can turn to revenge, violence and even genocide to maintain that power? Or are we reminded that the Divine Lover/Creator of Life chose to enter fully into our human experience in order to show us humility and how to truly love God and one another; by washing one another's feet as the slaves were to do in Jesus' time; by healing those afflicted with disease, feeding those who hunger and thirst and welcoming the stranger and the "alien" as one of our own. Perhaps when we contemplate the crucifix we remember Matthew 16: 24-26, "Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me"; an invitation to love as God loves and respond to abuse of any kind with a radical non-violence that may well lead to a cross of one kind or another. Or have we learned that it is only through the experiences of the many sufferings that can greatly challenge us in life that we can be assured that we will finally be led to the glory of a Resurrection, as Easter reveals? Our great mystics remind us that the spiritual journey is a circular one that spirals vertically upward toward the Divine on that cross and simultaneously horizontally reaches out to embrace the world as we circle in and out of experiences of suffering and resurrection throughout our lifetime.
Most Muslims believe that Jesus was not crucified but rather rose directly to heaven remaining there until his second coming and the final judgment at the end of historical time. Disputed through the centuries by scholars from different sects, some Persian Ismaili Shia scholars in the 10th and 11th century affirmed the crucifixion. A more recent Lebanese Islamic scholar and professor of religious and inter-faith studies, Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub, who was born in 1935 and died in 2021, suggested that the death of Christ "challenges human beings who in their folly have deluded themselves into believing that they would vanquish the Divine Word, Jesus Christ, the messenger of God. The death of Jesus is asserted several times and in various contexts in the Qur'an", such as:
"Remember when Allah said, "O Jesus! I will take you and raise you up to Myself. I will deliver you from those who disbelieve, and elevate your followers above the disbelievers until the Day of Judgment. Then to Me you will all return, and I will settle all disputes." (Qur'an 3:55 )
Thus we are left with the reality that the Cross in all of its rich spiritual meanings has also been used as a horrific instrument of torture as well as a rationale for military crusades and religious antagonism and division.
Today, in the land we call Holy, claimed and revered by all three Abrahamic faith traditions, Munther Isaac, a Lutheran Pastor in Bethlehem, put forth the powerful image of "Jesus in the rubble" of war torn Gaza, stating that as a disciple of Christ the only solution to conflict is non-violence; the non-violence that Jesus so clearly demonstrates for us when from the Cross he prayed out loud "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." (Luke 23:34)
May the love of friends increase your faith in the healing power of the Divine Lover of Humanity and may our beloved Pope Francis rest in Peace.
Peace to you,
Dorothy
See www.dcbuck.com for all past letters to the Badaliya and Peace Islands