Weekly THIS AND THAT for August 31, 2008: Farewell for a While

This and That
Farewell for a While


As many of you know, last year Cardinal Keeler granted me a 6-month sabbatical for prayer and study. Instead of taking it as a period of six months straight, I chose to divide it into two three-month segments. This past January, February and March I spent at Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery in South Carolina. The seven hours of prayer a day, the five hours of manual labor, the horarium (aka “schedule”) that included fasting and abstinence and no talking every day created an extraordinary experience of prayer for me.

I chose to break up the six months inasmuch as a wanted to be here at Our Lady of Grace from April through August. There was a new principal to hire and orient, approve a new 5-year Strategic Plan, and approve the parish and school budgets for the New Year beginning July 1st.

I am now preparing to embark on the “study” part of the sabbatical which will be three months (September 5th through December 4th) studying at the Ecumenical Institute at Tantur, Israel.

At its heart, the Institute is a three-month experience in continuing education and spiritual renewal. What characterizes the program is the context of the Holy Land, what John the Evangelist called “the fifth gospel.” To read the story of Jesus and the first Christians in the context of this “fifth gospel” shapes not only our understanding of the Scriptures and their history of salvation, but also of how our Christian faith is embodied in concrete, complex reality. While we will have many guided excursions (among them, a five-day trip to Galilee) to get to know the land where our Catholic faith originated, we will focus not only on the stones of archeological remains, but also on the “living stones,” the local Christian communities. We will be studying Eastern and Western churches in their difficult situations as minorities in the Holy Land. They share land and life with the Jewish and Muslim communities, whose faith and spirituality will also be part of our study.

The program begins with an introductory week, where some of the historical, cultural and religious realities of the Holy Land will be presented as a frame to understand the Core courses which extend through the three months. I will be taking the following courses:

➢ Ecumenism: with Fr. Thomas Stransky begins with the participants’ reflective experiences of ecumenism, then goes into the biblical foundations for Christian unity work, the development of the ecumenical movement, and where it is now.

➢ Local Churches: with Fr. Michael McGarry roots ecumenism in the local reality, which leads to a study of the Church’s history in the Holy Land, and of differing Eastern and Western spiritualities. This course also includes contact with the local Christian communities.

➢ Biblical Geography: taught by Paul Wright and Mr. Allan Rabinowitz concentrates on the guided field trips, prepared by lectures, with maps and diagrams. Starting with Jerusalem and Bethlehem and their environs, we visit also the Negev and the Judean Deserts and the Dead Sea area. We also devote detailed attention to the Jerusalem of Jesus’ time, as well as a five-day trip to the Galilee of the gospels half-way through the course. The study combines geography and archaeology with the biblical texts, aiming at a deeper understanding of their message.

➢ Scripture: taught by Fr. Michael McGarry as “Jesus in his Cultural Milieu,” and reviews the concrete realities of family life, honor-and-shame culture and other dimensions of Jewish life and Middle Eastern culture at the time of Jesus. Dr. Edward Breuer presents a Jewish reading of the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures, both Torah and Prophets.

➢ Judaism: taught by Debbie Weissman presents the fundamental tenets of the Jewish faith and Jewish living, its Covenant, Torah, Talmud; family and gender relations; prayer life, the role of the great festivals, the Land; Jewish-Christian dialogue.


➢ Islam: taught by Dr. Mustafa Abu Sway, and Sister Bridget Tighe, FMDM. The course will offer the faith and history of Islam, its encounters with the West, its social organization (family, gender relations) and how it faces modernity and change.

➢ The program will also offer shorter sessions: Among these shorter sessions are “Palestinian Liberation Theology” (Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, Anglican priest and Director of the Sabeel Center) and “Jewish Identity, Nationhood and State” (Mr. Daniel Rossing, Jewish educator, director of the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations). A number of lectures open to the wider public are complemented by others only for the Tantur Community, where invited guests give more informal presentations of their personal experiences and perspectives.

The course is an ecumenical experience in itself. During the three months, the participants create and form a learning community, not only in the classroom, but also by common life and conversations, traveling together, and praying together. The community meets every evening for worship prepared by an ecumenically blended group of residents. A willingness both to stand for and present one’s own spiritual tradition and to be open to learning from others’ is important for the common growth.

As was the case when I lived as a monk at the monastery, while I’m away being a student, Sr. Mary Therese will be acting as Pastoral Leader of the community. During my time in studies, I will not be available by phone or Internet. In case of an emergency, please contact Sister Mary Therese at the parish office. She will know how to reach me.

Fondly,
Father Nicholas