October 4, 2026.
Dear Friends,
We will gather together remotely for our Badaliya and Peace Islands Institute faith sharing on Sunday, October 4 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.
This year begins our 25th year of monthly Badaliya USA and Peace Islands faith sharing gatherings. From our first small gatherings of Christian believers in order to re-envision Louis Massignon and Mary Kahil's Badaliya prayer for our historical time in the United States in December 2002, to joining with the Peace Islands community, dedicated to interfaith and intercultural relationships, our Muslim and Christian faith sharing has grown into lasting friendships and expanded into an International community. It is fitting for this Jubilee year that we begin the academic year on the Feast Day of Saint Francis, for his spiritual legacy became one of the foundational inspirations for Louis Massignon's own spiritual journey. One of the most well-known Christian Saints, Francis' love for every form of life in the natural world has made him the patron Saint of ecology, a reminder of the Divine mandate for humanity at the dawn of Creation to care for our planet and all of life on it. We are also aware that the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation began on September 1st and ends each year on October 4th, the Feast of Saint Francis.
It is also fitting that we begin this Jubilee year with Louis Massignon's vision of Badaliya and his own vow as a third order Franciscan, along with his recognition of the significance of Saint Francis' famous visit in the thirteenth century to the Muslim Sultan during the fifth Crusade. In recent years this event in the life of Francis has identified him as the first in a divided religious world to enter into Christian and Muslim engagement with love as a foundation. His intense prayer for the well-being of the Sultan is said to have resulted in the Saint receiving the wounds of Christ, called the "stigmata" in his own body. This kind of mystical substitution is the belief according to which a person can, through love and union with the Divine, offer our own suffering, our prayers or our sacrifices for the spiritual well-being of other persons.
When Louis Massignon established the Badaliya prayer movement with Mary Kahil in 1934, he was drawing on his own spiritual and theological experience. The prayer of substitution became the center of his own Christian spirituality and informed his intimate understanding of the experience of Muslim mystics as well. Substitutionary Prayer is deeply imbedded in the Christian belief that through His suffering and crucifixion, (His Passion), Christ saves all of humanity by offering His life for the salvation of all of us. Believers in turn are called, as followers of Christ, not only to offer our own lives, our own suffering and challenges for the benefit of others, but in Massignon's vision, to even empathically take onto ourselves the sufferings of others as well. For some, this has led them to even lose their own life for the sake of another.
Massignon's extensive 50 year study of the spiritual life and legacy of the 10th century Sufi mystic, known as al-Hallâj, led him to believe that, like Christ, the "abdal" in Islamic mystical tradition, also offer their lives in a prayer of substitution in order to sustain life in a world much in need of salvation from destructive human behavior. By "crossing over to the Other", Christian members of the Badaliya take onto themselves the needs of the Muslim community, their life challenges, their hopes and dreams, faults and struggles, in an offering out of love for their well-being and fullness of life. The inspiration is always motivated by our own open-hearted reception of the love offered unconditionally by the Spirit of the Divine Lover of humanity for each one of us, uniquely made in the image of God. The intention of the Badaliya is for peace and reconciliation and ultimately friendship between Muslims and Christians rather than misunderstanding, division and fear. By entering into a different faith experience than or own, we find our own spiritual growth enriched and expanded. Massignon wrote:
"Let us reflect together on the meaning of our gathering, for if substitution is first of all a thought, a vow in the depth of our souls, it is only truly accomplished if we assume in our lives and our hearts of flesh, the sorrows of the others, his bleeding wounds. Through our compassion and interior tears we can non-violently offer our advice. We feel deeply that non-violent compassion is the corner stone of any reconstruction of human society, provided that we persuade others of it by showing them that this notion of compassion makes it possible to solve the harrowing psycho-social problem of the contagious influence of evil."
Massignon's vision of all three Abrahamic faith traditions as siblings belonging to the same paternal family of the prophet and biblical saint, Abraham, reminds us to be seekers of our common humanity even in the midst of world-wide conflicts and terrible human suffering. The key themes in Massignon's vision of Badaliya are compassion, hospitality and non-violent peace with justice. If there is no other take away for our gathering today it is that until we can identify ourselves with the trauma that other human beings are experiencing in our world we will not be able to establish the healing and reconciliation that can put an end to the vengeful rage that fuels violence and war, Only then can we begin to address the many other extreme challenges facing our warming world today.
Let us begin our silent reflections today with the following Carmelite prayer:
"God of the nations, look upon the lands devastated by war and show the way to peace. Turn our guns into plows and our bombs into bread. Remove hatred from our hearts and vengeance from our memories. Give us the wisdom and the will to end terrorism and war whether in lands far or near. or in the confines of our families and communities. Help us to remember that we are one family. Grant this through the intercession of all the peacemakers of all times and all places, especially those who suffered persecution and death for the sake of justice and peace. Amen."
Peace to you,
Dorothy
See www.dcbuck.com for all past letters to the Badaliya and Peace Islands