Dear friends,

As you know, our Parish is engaged in the dialogue with the Buddhist community and the Muslim. Sharing with them our faith-experience we hear very often, at the end of meetings: “After all we have the some God!”

This remark is very often understood as a sign of tolerance and openness, while, in reality is a sign of ignorance.

Yes, God is one, but our experience of this reality is quite different so much so that different historical religions came into being.

 Religion is a very tricky topic: it shapes, forms and informs people. If we look at the Muslim world we realize that it is not by chance the majority of up-rises and revolutions happen on Fridays, usually after the solemn prayer of the afternoon which features sermons of Muslim clerics.

The situation is different in Asia, where the colorful pantheon of their Gods and Goddesses, their multiplicity and variety, explains and justifies the division in casts of the ordinary people.

One could safely say: “Tell be what kind of God you believe in and I’ll tell you what kind of person you are!”

Christians continue the tradition of the Jewish people, as we can see from the first reading. We believe that there is only one God. This is not a consequence of a philosophical reflection, but an experience. The Israelites experienced, in their history, that the multiplicity of the gods worshiped by the people around them, is an illusion. In their psalms they pray:” They have mouths but they don’t talk, they have nostrils, but they don’t breath”. Throughout their history they experienced the presence of a reality that can’t not be put in human words, can’t be labeled. They also experienced that this reality is merciful, gracious, kind, forgiving and faithful. This is so not because of some mental gimmick, but because God was experienced in this way by the many generations of Jews who walked with him in the desert and were settled in the Land that He had given them. History proves to them God’s fidelity.

Christians continue with the same keen sensitivity to history. The author of the Letter to the Hebrew in the New Testament writes:“In the past, God spoke to our fathers in various and different ways through the prophets. Nowadays He has spoken to us through His Son” Heb. Who was “sent into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him” John 3,3.

We could ask ourselves: “If the Trinity is a mystery, why does God tells us something that we can’t fathom nor understand? Is it not useless?”

It a certain sense it is true.

We fail to understand that the word “mystery” while in our culture refers to something pertaining to intelligence that goes beyond intelligence itself, in the original Greek it means: “A gratuitous act of God to save us”. Talking about Himself and His being, in reality God is talking about ourselves who have been fashioned in His image and can work and function only as God works and functions.

 Learning about God, in reality we learn about ourselves.

• Relationship:

We learn that the unity of God is the unity of a family, where there is a relationship of love. We could say “In the beginning there was the relationship, and the relationship was with God and the relationship was God!” John 1.1

• Service:

We learn also that in this relationship one has to die. In the case of the church and of our personal relationship with people it is our ego that has to die if the dialogue is to continue.

• Differences are a gift:

Christians learn from the Trinity that differences, be it in languages, cultures, ideas, genders are to be looked upon as precious gifts and not threats. To discriminate is to sin against our creed.

• Mercy:

Because Christ came into the world not to judge, we learn that tto must not judge, least of all judge ourselves.

• No condemnation:

“You O Lord, do not condemn and do not despise me, even when others condemn me and I condemn myself. You came not to reproach me with a criminal record, but to free me of it, nailing it to your Cross. At the same time, however, you expect me to believe and trust you and myself, to give to other what you give to me: do not condemn, but save!”

These are the implications of believing in the Trinity, of being a Christian. When we project the evil present in our hearts on other people; when we judge and condemn; when we discriminate; when we look at differences with prejudice, when we are afraid of colors and genders, we show that we are not Christians. We can be good people, good Muslims or Buddhists but for sure, not Christians.