With its two volumes and 4,400 pages, the just-published Norton Anthology of World Religions may seem quite imposing. I am only 100 pages into it, and I am happy to report that it is in fact a friendly guide to the religious heritage of a great proportion of the peoples of the earth.

By "friendly" I mean that the editors and writers are committed to keeping their exposition of six great religions at the human level. Even if we think that these religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Judaism, and Islam, in addition to Christianity) are remote from our experience, this collection of basic texts of these religions helps the reader to find connections between one's own experience and the common human search for meaning.

I have read a bit of the Hinduism section, and already I find myself thinking about the concept of "sacrifice" as a universal. We Christians, of course, focus our understanding of "sacrifice" upon the person of Jesus Christ, and as we do so, we express our sense that somehow a balance must be established in relations between God and people. As I read of Hindu ritual, it turns out that sacrifices of butter to the gods are understood to maintain the balance of the universe, so that the gods will provide sufficient food for people. "What was fed to the fire was fed to the gods. Not only did the gods live upon the sacrificial foods, but the energy in the sacrifice kept the universe going. The offerings that the priest made into the fire kept the fire in the sun from going out; if no one sacrificed, the sun would not rise each morning."

Although Hinduism, with its pantheon of numerous gods, may seem in many ways foreign — how many times in our Jewish-Christian tradition have we emphasized that God is one? — yet we find something utterly in keeping with our own experience. Many, if not most of us, are Catholic Christians because this is the religion we received from our parents. Hinduism is, quite emphatically, the religion which has emerged from the day-to-day living, across thousands of years, of the peoples of the Indian subcontinent. There is, in the Hindu experience, an endorsement of the idea of religion as something one is born into. Christianity, in some of its expressions, can emphasize individual decision to the detriment of the beauty of seeing faith as the most precious gift which can be handed from parent to child. Catholic Christianity in particular permits a sense of ease with the idea of faith as a communal experience.

I intend to work my way through the Norton Anthology of World Religions, and I hope that I will find much to share in this column. We remember that the Vatican II "Declaration on Non-Christian Religions" affirmed that the Catholic Church "rejects nothing of what is true and holy" in the other religions of the world. Differences will always stand out; we must take special care to make discoveries of what the world's religions have in common.