Called to Pray in Community
Sunday 9th February 2025This week, we continue our Jubilee of Jubilee series by exploring how interreligious gatherings and community prayer can bear joint witness to our firm faith in the one God.
February marks the Jubilee for Interfaith and Ecumenism and this month, we’re joined by our Episcopal Vicar for Dialogue to explore the importance of celebrating and embracing the bonds that unite us with other faiths.
Can we pray together at interreligious gatherings?
This is a question people have been asking for many years.
In 1989 The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, through their commission for dialogue and ecumenism, said in the their ‘Guidelines for Interreligious Dialogue’ presented prayer in common with members of other religious groups as not only possible – but recommended – a duty even.
‘The purpose of such common prayer is primarily the corporate worship of the God of all who has created us to be one large family. We are called to worship God not only individually but also in community, and since in a very real and fundamental manner we are one with the whole of humanity, it is not only our right but our duty to worship him together with other’
The Bishops of India make it clear that discernment and preparation are essential. Pastoral judgements must be made, exploring what is possible and advisable. They also make it clear that common prayer between Christians and members of other religions is both possible and desirable in the context of contemporary interreligious dialogue. A good starting point would be Jewish, Christian and Muslims. Religious communities are being thrown together ever more now, because of population movement.
From Adam and Eve onwards, the Bible is clear that God wants to dialogue with all human beings. After Adam and Eve broke away from sin, God desired to dialogue. God spoke with Cain both before and after his terrible crime of killing his brother Able.
An ongoing encounter with God is the before is the very purpose of creation.
The dialogue between God and humankind reaches its highest and most intimate expression in Jesus. Throughout history God has made covenants with people, for example with Abraham and Moses. The descendants of Abraham have a special covenant by virtue of their special election by God. Other covenants are not abolished, in fact they come to full flower in God’s covenant with ‘the nations’ in Jesus. At the same time we Christians recognise in Jesus, God’s never to be surpassed revelation to humankind and the mediator of our salvation.
Prayer is the universal aspect of religion. But the subject of the possibilities of interreligious prayer does raise some interesting questions:
- Who or what if God?
- Are we all praying to one and the same (although our images and understanding of God are different)?
The words Pope Benedict XVI said to Muslims during his Papal visit to Turkey in 2006 applies to Jews also, and underscores the importance of strengthening our relationships with one another through all possible means.
“Christians and Muslims belong to the family of those who believe in the one God and who, according to their respective traditions, trace their ancestry to Abraham……. We are called to work together. So as to help society to open itself to the transcendent, giving Almighty God his rightful place…. May we come to know each other better, strengthen the bonds of affection between us in our common wish to live together in harmony, peace and mutual trust. As believers, we draw from our prayer the strength that is needed to overcome all traces of prejudice and to bear joint witness to our firm faith in God.”
Interreligious prayer may not be a vocation for most Christians, and surely those who are called need careful formation and a deep prayer life of their own.
This Jubilee year is a year of Hope, can we be brave enough to hope that the three Abrahamic Faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam might deepen the ties we have and work towards being a greater joint witness to our firm faith in the one God.
Tagged | Interfaith | Jubilee 2025 | Jubilee of Jubilees | Prayer | Resources
