April 12, 2026.
Dear Friends,
We will gather together remotely for our Badaliya and Peace Islands Institute faith sharing on Sunday, April 12, 2026 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 that the hearts and minds of those perpetrators of violence be transformed from revenge-seekers into peace-seekers. Let us pray that the root causes of the many humanitarian crises in our world leading to so much trauma and human suffering be addressed. The Lebanese Bishop Nassif has made an appeal for our prayers for his brother priests and the Christian community in the southern part of Lebanon who are attempting to stay in their homes despite the war. He states that he is "humbled by the courage of the people and their clergy." The Christians of Lebanon share in the diminishing numbers of Christians in the Holy Land due to war and violence facing the "living stones", witnesses to 2000 years of Christian presence in Bethlehem and throughout the Holy Lands. At the same time, let us continue to support one another as a diverse faith sharing community faced with unprecedented challenges that threaten our many immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and the legal, educational and health systems in the United States. May we turn our prayers into action to the best of our abilities and address the most pressing issue of our time; the human induced climate change that has increased natural disasters all over the world and is destroying too many lives, along with the earth we are privileged to share with them.
On April 30th in the year 2000, Pope John Paul II established the Universal feast day for the Roman Catholic Church of Divine Mercy Sunday on the Sunday after Easter. The devotion came about between 1931 and 1938 when a Polish nun named Maria Faustina Kowalska received a series of mystical visions that she described in her diary. She was asked to paint an image of Jesus with two rays representing the pale flow of blood and water descending from his heart and side, with the words, "Jesus, I trust in you" inscribed below.
Today's Sunday after Easter was preceded by the Holy Week that Christians experienced leading to Easter Sunday a week ago. It is the most sacred week of the Christian liturgical year. The week begins with the apparent joyful entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday seated on a lowly donkey. That might have alerted the crowds waving their palms and shouting Hosannas that the week ahead may not produce the kind-of King they expected. That night, at that renowned Passover meal called the Last Supper, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples taking the place of the slaves who would normally be assigned such a task. He declared that this is what we must do for one another. It was here that the disciples were told that the traditional shared cup of wine would from now on become the blood of Christ being poured out for humanity. Here is the vision of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska of Divine Mercy. Jesus changed the meaning for His followers of the traditional shared bread stating that it would now become His own body freely offered them, and for us. From the Last Supper on Holy Thursday to the tragic betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane, to a trial, torture and condemnation, we were led into the experience of suffering and pain that we call, Good Friday. We have once again experienced the fear and tragic loss of a revered teacher struggling to carry a heavy cross through the streets of Jerusalem to Golgotha where he would suffer and die as a common criminal nailed to that instrument of torture. Here we find the other image of Divine Mercy in that mystical vision of Saint Kowalska: the water pouring out of the side of Jesus when he was pierced by a soldier's sword, highlighted by a final Word, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." This has become the mystery of water and wine shared as our communion cup with Christ in communities of faith for 2000 years since then because that was not the end of the story. Today the disciples, hiding in fear behind locked doors in Jerusalem experience the Risen Christ standing in their midst, "Peace be with you." It is on that amazing Easter event called "Resurrection" that we will spend the next 50 days attempting to grasp the depth of its meaning for our lives in the world we live in today.
"The word mercy and the word womb in Hebrew come from the same root as it does for the word compassion in Arabic. Thus mercy begins with the act of bringing life into the world - a reminder of just how precious human life is. "The experience of the risen Christ offering peace to the disciples through the ages is an offering of new life depicted in the image of Divine Mercy. The Qur'an describes the very essence of the nature of God as Rahma (Mercy) mentioned 300 times in the Qur'anic verses. The Fatiha, the first Surah of the Qur'an that is recited many times throughout the day by Muslim believers, begins with ar-Rahmani, ar-Rahim, most gracious, most merciful. Surah 7:156 states, "My mercy encompasses all things". Surah 13:6 states, "Indeed, your Lord is full of forgiveness for the people for their wrongdoing". The concept of Mercy in Islam, as in Christianity, extends from the Divine towards human beings to the relationships we are called to nurture with one another. The analogy of the womb, that protects and nurtures human life, with the Mercy that nurtures all human relationships, is an invitation to expand our sense of its vast possibilities into our broken world. Just as the Church teaches social justice as intrinsically connected to mercy, compassion and forgiveness, so Justice and Mercy are deeply rooted Islamic teachings as well.
The overlapping experience of Ramadan and Lenten practices this year leading to the feast of Eid-al-Fitr and the celebration of Easter Resurrection has been an opportunity to renew our shared sense of the great need for each of us to be witnesses of mercy, compassion, empathy, and love in an increasingly destructive and violent world. Perhaps the image of Divine Mercy pouring the birth waters and blood of human life out for us so that we in turn will willingly offer our own precious lives for one another is the road map to peace with justice most needed today. It is the source and inspiration for the Badaliya prayer movement and Peace Islands monthly gatherings.
Peace to you,
Dorothy
See www.dcbuck.com for all past letters to the Badaliya and Peace Islands