Imagine Mass at Mecca

by Letters Editor · Published December 6, 2009 · Updated January 17, 2017

Bernadette Wilczkiewicz IBVM, Pretoria – Professor Ngara writes about the inter-faith character of celebrations at Holy Saviour cathedral in Ethiopia (November 11-17). He also refers to the open-mindedness which made senior clergy and lay leaders participate so enthusiastically in the workshops I ran with Sr Allison Munroe on behalf of the Denis Hurley Peace Institute on the topic Leadership, Family and Conflict.

What good news! But what sent my mind into a spiral of What if questions was the last sentence: Would our own clergy in Southern Africa flock in their numbers to workshops presented by lay people on such a topic?

Oh the power of the question! What would happen if they did? The great German poet Rainer Maria Rilke says: Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.

What would happen if we all together, clergy, lay people, Muslims, Christians continued growing into the answers of this type of question?

What if the pope said Mass in Mecca and the chief rabbi celebrated the Passover Feast in the Vatican? Outrageous, of course (I must be looking for excommunication!), but what if they did? How broad and wide would our minds and hearts have to be to accept such an idea?

It could only happen after human beings had discovered the strongest energy of all times: what Teilhard de Chardin called the energy of love. Then maybe it will dawn on us what Jesus meant when he said: I have come to cast fire on the earth (Lk 12:49)