It has been just over three years since I was asked to go to Janssen Spirituality Centre in Boronia. It has been an interesting journey to change from working in PNG as a teacher, director of a Cultural Institute, or Conference Secretary. It has been like a new lease on life, interesting, fascinating, demanding, and challenging. Being asked to work in Interfaith Dialogue was something very new for me, but then I found it not totally unlike my experience in PNG either. To work among the PNG people, one has to learn and listen, to adapt and get used to a myriad different ways of doing things. In short, “to be open to the other”. The learning was from day to day, bit by tiny bit, until finally there was a deeper understanding and building of relationship that gave life both to myself and to the people I was privileged to work with.

My coming to Janssen Spirituality Centre (JSC) was a leap of faith that opened my eyes to a whole new way of being SVD. I began to see both the potential and the need for a learning experience, not just to be open to the other, but to be open to “the God experience in the other”. In the last few months, lots of words have been spoken about Nostra Aetate and how it was a starting point fifty years ago, to be willing to look at the good and beautiful things in other faiths. But there was still a question of why this might take place. It raises the question of, what exactly do we mean by interfaith education and interreligious dialogue? A seemingly terse remark by the Jesuit priest Thomas Michel, who himself has been engaged in promoting relations across religions for about a half century, captures the activity well: ‘What interreligious dialogue really means is how we relate to people who have no interest in becoming Christians.’4 This clarification is relevant here as there are a number of seminaries which do offer courses on the study of religions other than Christianity but they do so for other motives, one of which is as follows: ‘Understanding other religious traditions improves ability to effectively proselytise to members of other faith communities.’5 That explains why these interfaith courses are usually offered through the faculty’s World Mission departments.

Interfaith education has a totally different purpose. Its aim is to enlighten minds and open hearts to enable Christians (and others) to cultivate a more positive disposition and attitude towards their neighbours of other faiths. Their religious neighbours are then viewed not so much as competitors or targets of evangelism but as partners or co-pilgrims in the journey towards God and God’s Kingdom. This is a very new ministry, with equally new theological presuppositions. Mutual learning and witnessing are the order of the day. Herein lies the challenge as not every Christian believes he/she needs to be witnessed to or have anything to learn from their religious neighbours. Suffice it to say that debates surrounding the need for interfaith education and dialogue continue amongst Christian theologians. Unlike mission and evangelism, the history of interfaith dialogue is brief, and the benefits and incentives for putting it into motion are often less than obvious.

“There is an aspect of mercy that goes beyond the confines of the Church. It relates us to Judaism and Islam, both of which consider mercy to be one of God’s most important attributes. Israel was the first to receive this revelation which continues in history as the source of an inexhaustible richness meant to be shared with all mankind. As we have seen, the pages of the Old Testament are steeped in mercy, because they narrate the works that the Lord performed in favour of his people at the most trying moments of their history. Among the privileged names that Islam attributes to the Creator are “Merciful and Kind”. This invocation is often on the lips of faithful Muslims who feel themselves accompanied and sustained by mercy in their daily weakness. They too believe that no one can place a limit on divine mercy because its doors are always open.

I trust that this Jubilee year celebrating the mercy of God will foster an encounter with these religions and with other noble religious traditions; may it open us to even more fervent dialogue so that we might know and understand one another better; may it eliminate every form of closed-mindedness and disrespect, and drive out every form of violence and discrimination. (Misericordiae Vultus 23.)”

“In this Jubilee Year, may the Church echo the word of God that resounds strong and clear as a message and a sign of pardon, strength, aid, and love. May she never tire of extending mercy, and be ever patient in offering compassion and comfort. May the Church become the voice of every man and woman, and repeat confidently without end: “Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old” (Ps 25:6). “ ( Misericordiae Vultus. 25)