Towards Common Ground

"I will make of you a great nation*, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you."

"Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so shall your descendants be."

Abram put his faith in the LORD, who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.

- Genesis 12: 2-3, 15:5-6

*Not to mean the emergence of a state but the fulfillment of a great nation of old; the fruition of a Divine promise of hope and of peace entrusted to a people with a shared spiritual heritage; an Abrahamic siblinghood, numberless as the stars, meant by our Almighty God to bless the communities of mankind.

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The Call to Christian Unity

The one Solidarity shares in the missionary spirit of our Holy Mother Church to announce Jesus Christ as Savior of all humankind.

This evengelization however in the context of the present day world must first begin with Christians themselves because it must be understood by all of blessed Christendom that for as long as we rest complacent in the successes and the conveniences of our so-called modern world and neglect the sacred duty that we have among ourselves on behalf of our suffering world to be one as our God is one and the House of our Lord Jesus Christ stands divided, we deny ourselves the Peace of our Lord and we allow war to afflict our nations.

This internal evengelization is essential in order to re-introduce to all Christians what is common to our particular faith and to build from what is common the new bridges of an understanding that will take us closer to our common goal of one universal Church and one universal Lord.

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The Islamic World

Islam is best described as a mosaic, a tapestry made of the one thread of the one faith designed by the one Weaver of all realities from myriad independent realities that each tells of the story of every individual life of every single Muslim beginning from their Prophet Muhammad (my own Abrahamic peace and common goodwill be unto this much maligned universal hero of sacred life and common humanity, a first magnitude star of the celestial firmament. I personally draw my inspiration from these stars - along with Rumi and Saladdin of Islamic promise - for I know what is worth seeing in each of them, their souls being made beautiful for being beheld by Beauty Itself. I hold no candle to these people so therefore, have no right to judge them without hope in exactly the same way one may not judge anyone, from the least to the greatest in significance - all being equal in human dignity, without hope. One, especially those who aspire to the one Solidarity, must be very careful not to slip back into the old ways of war and division and easily believing again in division, allow differences to rule their hearts, most especially when it concerns these major personages in our common humanity.) in time and dimensional space and woven into the one fabric of the one Ummah of that great religion we all have come to know in our common reality as Islam.

As all things were originally intended in creation, this great mosaic is intended to reflect the beauty of it's Beholder and is intended to gloriously reveal to our suffering humanity, the unsurpassed skill of it's wondrous Weaver, to give us all hope in the majesty of faith in things unseen.

Islam however, it must be understood, is hurt. As with all others things in this world that is whole and meant for the good of humanity, Islam is hurt by war. We Christians who are ourselves divided in our House must not be the last to understand this, for here in this midnight world of our present time, it is from the context of this hurt that we shall all become human beings again in the sight of each other.

Let us look at the one Islamic Ummah as it really is, as a whole, it is a vessel of human life and this same vessel has preserved for our humanity many treasures of the past, and because it is meant to serve life, it is still full of potential for the good of life, one must only look past the present convention of things to see what contributions it still has to offer to all of our humanity. Indeed, the Islamic world is different only because it remain misunderstood and perhaps, it remain misunderstood because somehow, we as a whole of humanity still, after all this time, misunderstand our own selves.

Life can never be inimical to life for the Wisdom of God persist forever. Where there is something that imperils life, it is something else, it is something that will always be not original to our common creation.

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The Jewish People

Judaism is a particular faith of a particular people, the Jews. It is best described as a Covenant lineage that intertwine both blood and faith, each of which is the distinct patrimony of the matrinineal lineage of the Kings and the Levitical pedigree of the priests of ancient Israel.

As a Christian, I am distinctly aware of the particular prejudices that my own particular tradition of honorable religion has leveled against the Jews and it is my personal intention to undo them the same with all the other labels, misconceptions and mindless stereotypes that have formed a false sense of animus between the two other great Abrahamic faiths of Judaism and Islam and the faith of Christianity in general. It is something that I know still lurks in the expressions and in the cultures of nations shaped by Christianity as a whole.

While I will never compromise on the truths of my own Catholic faith, I am of the salient conviction that there can never exist incompatibilities that serve to restrict the boundless way of Christian charity, for all things thus imbued by charity cease to bear false meanings for all things perceived by the heart of Jesus Christ are liberated by His truth to become as the heart of Saint Paul, all things unto all people.

While, I am not inclined toward generalizations that sweep an entire segment of our common humanity under false pretenses, good or bad, nor do I have that particular inclination to justify in my heart what in truth can not be justified by truthful men, I am of the particular conviction that give value to all of sacred life, regardless of who they are, what they believe in and what lack defines their humanity, for I have a common hope for our nations and hold justice to be virtuous that come to the aid our common humanity to remedy what is evil and to preserve what is good.

Justice that is inherently vengeful or contemptuous of sacred life will never bind on earth what all men of good will aspire from heaven. For the anger of men serve not the righteousness of God, and it is clear in our common experience of reality,that vindictive forms of justice never serve the real reasons for which the virtue of Justice is established by the one God of heaven on earth because retribution is not the function of Justice, this cardinal virtue is meant for reasons more profound than to satisfy the erroneous need to perpetuate violence, restoration is the true function of this virtue.

Because my path takes me through the hope of our nations, and because I have a personal experience of the Shoah, I support Israel as a sovereign state. However, because I am just as committed to seeing the wounds of the Islamic world heal, wounds I am not the least to understand for I see them also in my own faith, I am just as equally committed to the requisite truths that promote the proper establishment of the future state of Palestine, as a strong shelter and protectress of the Palestinian aspiration to prosper her generations unto the last of her generations and to live in peace and solidarity with all the nations of the region and of our one world, as a whole among an order of wholes, wholes upon greater wholes unto the infinite and eternal majesty of our one God, and more wondrous than the visible stars we see above us.

I do not look to Israel as anything but a shelter of her people and all the generations of her people, it is, to me, what should have prevented the Shoah and nothing else - standing shoulder to shoulder with all of the nations of the one family of the nations of mankind. It is war that distorts our vision of each other, it is the turbulent nature of war that causes us to lose sight of each other's common humanity as in a permanent dust storm. In peace, our nations as one whole family would also share in the character of the waters of the one Republic whole.

God will see to it that prophecy as they are written in Sacred Scripture will come to pass in proper order and exact time, and I trust to God enough despite myself to let my faith take over where my own humanity fails. I do not intend to explain the destiny of nations, I simply intend to direct our common hope toward an end that is more befitting our common humanity, toward a kinder, brighter, and more peaceful tomorrow for all men, women and children of all the nations of the one family of the nations of mankind.

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Furthermore regarding both Islam and the Jewish people (the two other lineages of the one Abrahamic promise) in particular and to all other honorable religions in general:

"The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be."

Matthew 6: 22-23

Bearing in mind what we have previously established that what we can not see surpasses us (for only a truly secularist mindset would wish to either negate or deny the unseen); meditate on these words of our Blessed Savior before thinking of any disrespect for those, known and known to God alone, whose time in this world have already passed into eternity:

"But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, 'Raqa,' will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, 'You fool,' will be liable to fiery Gehenna.

Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift."

Matthew 5: 22-24

Most especially remember the light of their virtues and recall from Whose one Light these virtues are a pure reflection of, believe in these or believe in the darkness - it is always left to our our choices, my precious friend. For no one, not even our God Himself will interfere with our free will - even at the cost of our own nobility as man - our LORD has to provide it and we, in turn, have to own it or else it is not true happiness but a slavery; not pregnant Gospel promise of the true liberation of the sons and daughters of God but a barren womb, empty of promise, a pure deception of the manipulative malice of the Devil.

Moreover;

"At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known."

1 Corinthians 13: 12

Bearing in mind what our beloved Apostle to the Gentiles, Saint Paul, (whose Jubilee Year we are presently celebrating) have written here in 1 Corinthians about our experience of God's immanence within our own selves, where we are to also look to this same immanent nature of the Divine Reality in others, we would not see as dimly, for when we experience virtue in other people - as in our canonized Saints, our Mother Mary, the holy Angels, our Blessed Savior Himself as well as all of those numberless stars of the celestial firmament of your own heart that God Himself, in His good pleasure, shall introduce to you in your own lives, they will not appear to you as in a mirror dimly but will be in your own life the shining reflections of the multitude of aspects of God's one infinite Beneficence. And where you to recall them always in your own heart and keep them always in your mind, you will live in gratitude of God forever, my precious friend.

Peace and Godspeed!

---<--@ My Miyang, for you, my darlingest.

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.