People live lives of faith because of a hunger and thirst for meaning. You and I, as Catholic Christians, rely upon the truth of Jesus Christ to orient ourselves so that our lives make sense.
You and I are graced with the truth of a God who has loved human beings so much that he became one of us. This truth has come to us, not because of any skill or wisdom or generosity on our part, but because the truth is a sheer gift from a God who gladly reveals himself to us.
We live in what I call a “big small world.” People of this planet find themselves being knit together more intimately, as communication and information technologies make our world civilization a community without boundaries. That’s the “small” part.
The “big” part is that we keep making discoveries about the people with whom we share the earth. And of course we wish to apply our faith-orientation to our understanding of what we share with fellow Christians outside the Catholic Church, with people of other faiths, and with people of no faith.
As ecumenical and interreligious officer of our diocese, I hope to encourage local Catholics to ask and explore the questions that face us when living in a “big small world.”
We live in an area in which Catholics are a sizable minority, but always definitely a minority, of the general population. We live in times in which Christianity cannot be considered the “default setting” for a personal orientation toward life. We are in contact with a world in which a variety of non-Christian faiths thrive.
We have everything to gain from exploring the complexity of the questions which arise when we embrace the “big small world” as it is. One may wonder whether contact with people of other faiths, or other varieties of Christianity, may somehow be dangerous. Could our faith be weakened or diluted through contact with others?
After many years of ecumenical and interreligious activity, I have experienced the opposite. When one enters into a relationship of dialogue and sharing with people who differ from oneself, one result is that one’s own identity is affirmed and honored.
Of course, if we are to experience enrichment in entering into conversation with those who differ from us, we need to have a good grounding in our own faith. The truth of the Catholic Christian faith cannot exist within us merely as a series of statements or propositions. The truth is alive within us when we are able to affirm that we have an experience of the presence of Jesus, the Word Made Flesh, who has permitted to us a share in the resurrection which he won for all humanity.
From our mothers’ arms, we have been given great helps toward developing our awareness of the lifting up of human nature by the Son of God. From a position of humility and giftedness, we can treasure our own relationship with God even as we learn to appreciate the outlooks of others who are hungry for truth.