Threshold - Winter 2004

From the Prioress
Mary Collins, OSB


"Hospitality: Antidote to Hostility"

So many Mount friends, benefactors, and family members converged on the KCI Expo Center for the Night of Dreams! Being with you for the evening was a joy. We know that we are deeply blessed to have you supporting us in our ministries and in our care for the elderly among us, and we are grateful. This issue of Threshold focuses on an important dimension of all our ministries that we seldom speak about, perhaps because it seems self-evident to us.

Ecumenism is our theme. Recent popes have given Benedictines and other monastic orders a special mission in the church. At the turn of the 20th century, certain monasteries in Europe were asked to be places of ecumenical hospitality. It was believed that Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians who welcomed one another as brothers and sisters in Christ might overcome the centuries-old estrangements within the churches East and West. It was hoped that committed believers who came to know one another and to pray together might grow together in unity. They would also experience both the possibility and the difficulties of true reconciliation. These early initiatives helped prepare the way for today’s greater mutual understanding among all Christians who are baptized into the one Body of Christ. Now we see that Benedict had long ago prepared the way for such 20th century monastic dialogue. He taught that all guests were to be received as Christ, and that strangers who visited the monastery might well be messengers of God.

Pope John Paul II gave monasteries even greater responsibility at the turn of the new century. He has called on monastic communities to be places of interfaith dialogue and prayer. He has asked us to reach out even to those who do not believe in Christ. For several decades now Buddhist and Catholic monastics, men and women, have been gathering regularly to talk about the beliefs and practices that give contemplative shape to our lives. The Trappist Thomas Merton was an early interfaith explorer. His accidental death while he was engaged in inter-monastic dialogue in Thailand ignited widespread interest in Buddhist-Christian dialogue in many monasteries in the U.S. Our own Sister Barbara McCracken has participated in several of these formal dialogues; I have been privileged to take part in one.

Occasionally Benedictines from other U.S. monasteries have taken up long-term residence in Hindu ashrams. Some communities have founded daughterhouses in soil where few or no Christians live, in Japan, North Africa, and Korea for example, in order to be with those who do not know Christ. Most recently the leaders of the Monastic Interfaith Dialogue (MID) have been encouraging monasteries to initiate conversation and faith-sharing with Muslim believers when it is possible. Our location in Atchison, Kansas, has made such interfaith hospitality a long reach for us. Still, we have reached. Our Sisters Paula Howard, Regina Hansen, and Laura Haug, who taught both Muslim and Christian Palestinians at Bethlehem University in the 70’s, have brought into our monastery genuine respect for the followers of Islam, as has our continuing contact with international students from Thailand, India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and countries around the world.

In this issue of Threshold we offer you, our friends and readers, a look at the way the practice of ecumenical hospitality has been taking shape at the Mount. We believe that God has chosen and sent these guests to us for our mutual spiritual growth. We are humbled by the many Christians who come through our doors seeking God, and trusting that they will find God in the home of Benedictine sisters.

Sophia Center’s spirituality programs attract many. For the past eight years, the Mount and the Episcopal Diocese of Topeka have jointly sponsored the ecumenical program “Souljourners.” Souljourners is a three-year formation experience for men and women doing pastoral work in their churches who want to become more skilled and more competent as spiritual directors. Typical Souljourners come from the Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, and Catholic churches. During Souljourner weekends and retreats, they join the sisters’ morning and evening prayer, singing psalms with us, listening together to scripture, offering prayers and getting to know us and each other through the many informal conversations that arise. When the program is completed, more than a few Souljourners return to the Mount for retreats, for prayer days, and for their own spiritual counsel. A number have become Benedictine oblates, formally committing themselves to live their Christian lives faithfully in the spirit of the Rule of Benedict. Their faith and simplicity encourage us in turn.

Through all these encounters mutual trust and respect grow; historical separations grounded in fear, ignorance and bias are being bridged. Yet just when the old tears in the fabric of the Christian community are being mended, new fears and biases are showing up in the Catholic community. Does it astonish and sadden you, as it does me, that Catholics have begun speaking pejoratively of one another as “heretics,” “dissenters” and “apostates?” In times of confusion in church and society, fear of others who are not exactly “like us” is understandable. Yet our experience at the Mount tells us that getting to know those believers whose ideas and behaviors differ from ours is the surest way to overcome fear. As the late Henri Nouwen taught, and as Benedictines know, “hospitality is the best antidote for hostility.”

Mary Collins, OSB