Walking together

The Focolare Movement has held a number of symposia over the last decade or so in order to establish an ongoing dialogue with representatives of the world’s major religions.
The most recent of these was held in Jerusalem, from where Roberto Catalano sent this report.

Walking is a word that is often used in connection with Jerusalem. You walk in the Old City, a pedestrian area, and you walk around the walls. You walk to Mea Shearim, the area of the ultra-orthodox Jews, where everyone seems to run. You walk in front of Herod’s Gate, an Arab area. Everyone walks in Jerusalem: Jews (practising and non-practising), Arabs (Muslims and Christians), children and adults - and pilgrims. A closer look, however, reveals that everyone walks with their peers, in their own area. It is almost impossible to see Jews and Arabs together, or Jews in the Arab area, or Arabs in the Jewish area. It can happen, but they are fleeting moments.

Bridge over troubled water
To this constant movement of micro and macrocosms which pass side by side, but which remain closed in their own circles, an international group of Jews and Christians proposed an addition to the word walking: ‘Walking together’. It was the offer of a wider perspective on the centuries-old problems between the three monotheistic religions, but also on those more recent problems that had made Jerusalem the centre of gravity of world peace.
So, we walked together in the city, stopping at significant places; but we also walked with our thoughts and spirits, remembering the past and looking to the future, with the aim of building bridges. The moment seemed anything but favourable: the war in Gaza had opened wounds which will take generations to heal; the Holocaust denial by Bishop Williamson had complicated relations between the Jewish world and the Vatican, and not everyone viewed the forthcoming visit by Benedict XVI with optimism.
Like a bridge over troubled water sang Simon and Garfunkel. ‘These are meaningful words today,’ said Rabbi David Rosen during a round table discussion which surveyed relationships between Jews and Christians over the last fifty years. From the day John XXIII welcomed a Jewish delegation to the Vatican with the words which cancelled two millennia of incomprehension and hate: ‘I am Joseph your brother’.

Network of relationships
This was the prelude to the history-making progress, culminating in the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate and in the visits of John Paul II to the synagogue in Rome and to Jerusalem. There, in front of the Wailing Wall, he asked pardon of God for the evil committed against the Jewish people throughout the centuries. Rosen was involved in the opening of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the State of Israel. Referring to this he said: ‘I had the impression that generations of ancestors were looking down from heaven dumbfounded, and were saying to me, “David, what are you doing?”’ This was a telling image, and one which, although not ignoring the problems, helps things go ahead with hope, because of the courage which changed the history of recent decades.
Joseph Sievers, one of the most noted Roman Catholic scholars of Judaism, recalled the problems and the difficulties he faced as a young German adolescent taking his first steps in Hebrew studies. It was not long after the Second World War which, for the Jewish world, has only one name: the Shoah. Sievers lived through the same decades as Rosen and witnessed an opening of Christian views unimaginable before John XXIII. He too was not overlooking the difficult moments and the lack of understanding but, he said: ‘It is the network of relationships built up with many Jewish people that gives hope and makes us look ahead.’

At the Wailing Wall
Both Rosen and Sievers, from their respective viewpoints, agreed that two millennia of accusations, clashes and violence cannot be cancelled in a few decades. There are and there will be problems; but a different road has now been taken. Above all, we have set off walking together with courage and hope, which help us read the history of the last fifty years with objectivity.
There were moments of high symbolic value for the participants at the symposium. Together we stayed for a long time on the steps where Jesus, a Jew, prayed for unity, and together we prayed the psalm ‘the Lord’s my shepherd’, singing in Hebrew and Arabic. Together we went to the Wailing Wall, where a prayer in common made us vibrate with the love of the one God. Together we climbed up the hill of the Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem.
The words of Cardinal Martini’s message to the participants rang true: ‘When we walk together in the Spirit, we realize that the paths do not cross in a disordered and unforeseeable way, but that in some way they are all going in the same direction. Walking together means that we have not yet reached the ultimate goal: there is a mystery beyond all the paths, to which we are trying to draw near.’
I will not be able to forget the words an American Jew whispered to me in front of the Wailing Wall: ‘We are here to be reconciled to one another, also on behalf of our fathers’.