An end and a beginning

What a pivotal time this is. Advent begins a season of preparation for Christmas, which opens the Christmas season (yes, it does begin on Christmas instead of ending there). And on this day beginning it all — a new liturgical year, a new calendar year soon to come, and hopefully newness of spirit that both spiritual and secular folks usually try to achieve at the beginning of these new years — we are assimilating Pope Benedict’s message(s) from the just ended trip to Turkey. It wasn’t one for the Orthodox, and one for the Muslims. It was one.

In the middle of Sandro Magister’s latest analysis, he hits on the key lesson.

The dialogue “according to reason” between Christianity and the other religions, and Islam in the first place, is for Benedict XVI inseparably tied to the search for unity among Christians.

And dialogue with Islam “according to reason” demands that every link between faith and violence be severed. In his homilies and addresses in Turkey, pope Joseph Ratzinger incessantly called for religious freedom. He did this with repeated references to the martyrs – including those of today, like Fr. Andrea Santoro – who lost their lives for being peaceful witnesses to their Christian faith.

The Turkish political and religious leaders, who are highly anxious to be admitted to the European Union, now know much better than before that religious freedom is a requisite step for this admission. And also in this, Benedict XVI brought comfort to the non-Muslim minorities in Turkey.

It’s about unity, and the religious freedom necessary to achieve it. Yes, it’s necessary for Turkey to get that if they want unity with Europe — in the form of EU membership. But Christians can begin to have unity if they end the stalemate of dialogue. And ‘the world’ can get unity and the peace that comes with it if people end their denial of faith in a public square dominated by reason.

Sometimes a really simple little anecdote helps to just nail these big theological discussions. Here’s one from the homily given by the pastor of a church in a neighboring town where I attended morning Mass yesterday. Fr. N said that “over and over and over again” in the Gospel, Jesus repeated the message to his apostles that they had to be one, as he and the Father were one. Fr. N made the interesting point that people tend to put a lot of importance on someone’s last words before they die. When his father died, Fr. N said they asked each other, “what were his last words.” It sums up so much.

Well, he said, Christ was a few hours from being taken off to die when he spoke to the apostles about staying together, in unity, undivided, in him and his teaching. So that tells us how important that message was to Christ.

Then Fr. N headed into his anecdote. “I once carried the phone book out here to the pulpit for a homily and told the people I was going to open it and read to them the most offensive word in the whole telephone book.” I thought, ‘uh-oh’, what’s coming next…? He said the people in the pews shifted a bit and wondered, too. “I opened the yellow pages and pointed to the word ‘Churches’, and told them that…was the most offensive.”

“Churches” he repeated. And I immediately got it. It was so simple, it was startling.

That’s kind of what Benedict is doing. I hope we get it.