Sunday, April 11, 2010

Celebrating Divine Mercy Sunday on Pilgrimage.

Early Christian World Pilgrims are keeping all of you at Good Shepherd in prayer as we celebrate Mass on this beautiful Second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday.  In the Eastern Churches, this is called "Thomas Sunday" because of the event narrated in today's Gospel at Mass.  This photo of Fr. Tom celebrating Mass in an ancient "cave-church" in Cappadocia, Turkey, was taken during the 2007 Early Christian World Pilgrimage by Roger Schulte.


A few of us, representing all of you, are traveling through Turkey visiting a land made holy by a history of great Christian saints, and is now a modern secular republic that is 99% Muslim.  Our Early Christian World Pilgrimage explores all facets of our heritage and our experience both as Christians and as men and women living in our world today.  In establishing Divine Mercy Sunday ten years ago, Pope John Paul II emphasized that, in Christ, God's mercy expends to all people, without exception. 

In a society and culture where that vast majority of people do not believe as we do -- and I'm speaking about the USA as well as Turkey -- our role is not to proselytize and convert, but to bear witness.  To let our actions as well as our words speak, faithfully and clearly, out of our own experience of the mercy and love of God.  And that's what this feast is all about.  To seek a deeper trust and dependence  on God's overwhelming mercy, which we can claim because of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Yesterday (Saturday) we visited Troy and Gallipoli , both sites of famous battles -- one brutal and ancient, the other brutal and modern -- and we pray for peace in our troubled world.  Today we go to Pergamon, site of a famous Hellenistic center for healing, as well as place of the "throne of Satan" mentioned in the book of Revelation (Rev. 2:13), and pray that we all maybe faithful in living the call of Christ to give witness to our faith by works of service.  Midweek we will be in Ephesus, the ancient city graced by both St. Paul and St. John, and we will celebrate Mass at the house of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a shrine that is equally revered by both  Christians and devout Muslims.  We pray in a special way that Mary, loved in both religious traditions, may intercede to bring understanding and reconciliation among peoples.

The end of the week will find us in the Lycus Valley, the site of three cities -- Hierapolis, Laodicea, and Colossae -- whose Christian communities had a special relationship to St. Paul (see his letter to the Colossians and to Philemon).  A week from today, next Sunday, after Mass at the tiny church of St. Paul and Thecla downtown, we'll visit the tomb of the great Sufi mystic, Rumi, who founded the Whirling Dervishes.  Then we will spend time exploring Çatalhöyük, excavations of a 9,000-year-old neolithic settlement.  We seek to discover the surprising hand of God even in ancient human history.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Easter andTurkey




Christ is risen, Alleluia! He has truly risen, Alleluia!

All Orthodox Christians throughout the world, as well as Catholics who follow "Eastern Rite" liturgies and traditions but are in union with the Church of Rome, greet one another with those words during the Easter season. The first sentence is the greeting by one person; the second sentence is the response by the other.

Sure beats "Hi, how are ya?", doesn't it?

If you want to look further into this, Wikipedia lists the variants of this greeting in dozens of languages worldwide at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschal_greeting. Nifty, isn't it. Imagine: so many languages, cultures, and nationalities, and one faith!

So what does this have to do with Turkey, a secular republic that is more than 99% Muslim? Muslims recognize Jesus as a prophet, the greatest of the prophets before Muhammad. They even recognize his virgin birth from Mary. (In fact, Mary is mentioned more times in the Koran than she is the New Testament.) But they do not believe in his divinity, in his Resurrection, nor that he is the Son of God.

Accurate statistics are difficult to come by, but best estimates of the non-Muslim population are about 35,000 Catholics, 80,000 Orthodox (of which there are many varieties), 5,000 Protestants, and 26,000 Jews. (The majority of Jews in Turkey are Sephardic, descendants of those expelled from Spain in 1492.)

Behind these numbers lies an extensive, multifaceted history that, like any history of peoples and cultures, has glorious and tragic elements intermingled. Unfortunately, the history that most of us have learned in our American education, including Catholic church history, is heavily biased toward Euro-centrism, ignoring or downplaying both the intrinsic value of other cultures and the significance of their contribution to what we now are pleased to call "Western Civilization."

Frankly, I have come very late in life to realize and understand this. I became interested in this significant and neglected part of our heritage, including the 2,000-year contribution of Eastern Christianity as well as the 1,300-year contribution of Islam and Muslim culture, only as a result of my first visit to Turkey in 2000, exactly 10 years ago. I too was thoroughly indoctrinated in Euro-centrism for the first 57 years of my life. My own cultural awakening has broadened and deepened my understanding of our heritage as Catholic Christians and its implication for our life here and now in today's world. This isn't limited to history or cultural anthropology alone. My life-long interest in theology, scripture, and liturgy has been re-oriented as well. (Don't forget that the etymology of the word "orientation" means "facing east.) Out of this has been born my passion to share, as widely as I can, understanding of this heritage. And that's why I see leading this Early Christian world Pilgrimage to Turkey every year as a central part of my ministry even as pastor of a parish.

Why Turkey? Christianity, including Catholic Christianity, grew up in the land we now call Turkey. Even before Rome could claim its role as the sole center of "Catholic" Christianity, the Christian church was a collaborative diversity of churches. There are undoubtedly more sites in Turkey, made holy by significant holy people and events, than anywhere else in the world, including Rome and Israel/Palestine. With good reason I often call Turkey "the other Holy Land." Sadly, East and West grew increasingly alienated from one another, until the (thus far) irrevocable split occurred in 1054 with an angry and tragic mutual excommunication. This mutual excommunication was formally nullified in 1965 by Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I. There has been serious contact and dialogue since then, but any real, formal unity remains elusive.

More often than not, for a variety of historical reasons, the Orthodox celebrate Easter several weeks after we do in the West. This year, however, it's the same. On Thursday and Friday this week (April 8-9), our Early Christian World Pilgrims will be visiting several historic Orthodox churches in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), and will see those churches still decked out in their Easter finery. We will be praying for you at all the holy places in this land, dear to the heritage of both Catholic and Orthodox Christians. And we ask that you pray for us during the coming weeks of our Pilgrimage. You can follow us on the Pilgrimage at http://ecwpilgrimage.org.

Christ is risen, Alleluia! He has truly risen, Alleluia!