Father John Dear wrote in the Center for Action and Contemplation’s Journal Radical Grace about the non-violent impact that interfaith cooperation can make. “ At the heart of each major religion is the vision of peace, the ideal of compassion and love and justice, the fundamental truth of nonviolence.”

“Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948) was the first to point toward interfaith nonviolence. When he moved to India, and saw again the deep hostility between Hindus and Muslims, he made interfaith non-violence the core of his daily worship. Each day when his community gathered for prayer, they read excerpts from Hindu and Muslim scriptures, from the Sermon on the Mount and the Hebrew Bible…They concluded usually with a hymn about the all inclusive love that reconciles everyone, the love even for ones’s enemies. Forty years of interfaith, contemplative prayer transformed him into a universal spirit, as all the major religious scriptures hope for all of us.” “Religions are different roads converging to the same point,” Ghandi once wrote. “What does it matter that we take different roads, so long as we reach the same goal?  There will be no lasting peace on earth unless we learn not merely to tolerate but even to respect the other faith as our own.”

Let us pray that God will lead us to love as he loves. Let us pray for the Body of Christ. 

Contributed by Mary Ann Lause. Interested in joining the Peace and Justice Ministry?  Call or text Saralou Hendrickson at 314-440-2020.