What can the Christian contemplative tradition offer to the world in the coming millennium? What might be the major elements of a spiritual life rooted in the Christian tradition and at the same time in dialogue with the other world religions, modern science, and the healing arts?

The great gift that contemplative persons offer is the experience of the divine presence. Who is going to bring this realization into society if not those who are experiencing it?

To be in dialogue with the other world religions requires the contemplative experience because all in their fully developed spiritual disciplines have experienced it. This fact suggests that the members of the other world religions must henceforth be fully accepted as brothers and sisters, greatly loved by God and blessed with resources of immense value to contribute to us and to the world at large.

What is called for is the collaboration of all those who share true human values, especially among those religions that have been entrusted with long traditions of spiritual experience. This is the great treasure of humanity that now needs to be shared. From this perspective, one may rightly ask whether in the next millennium the purpose of the Christian religion is to make converts as we have been instructed up till now In virtue of the development of global consciousness, a new understanding of the Gospel is required. God is the Father of all men and women. Perhaps the first duty of the Christian religion now is not so much to propagate itself as to foster communion with the other world religions.

This communion would mean that for the first time in history, Christians would manifest by their behavior and attitudes that all the members of the human family are children of God, that each religion has its part to play in revealing the true God, and above all, that God wants the diverse religions of the world to live together in peace.

Unfortunately, up till now the religions of the world have been one of the chief sources of violence. Given the human condition, the greatest security that people have is their own particular religion. Hence any threat to it is a threat to their personal security system. We tend to be overprotective of our particular religious persuasion not so much out of religious conviction, but because we need to enjoy the security of enjoying God's special favor and to feel better than other people. This is not religion. It is rather an expression of the false self.

It is only through genuine contemplative experience that these naive loyalties are laid to rest so that we can see one another as the beloved child of the Father and as persons for whom Christ has died. 

The modern sciences are friends too. In recent generations religion and science have often been at each other's throats. Actually science is a friend. In the next century it will be important to have an ongoing and in-depth dialogue with science. The cutting edge of physics is the search for the unknown. Science, as Einstein put it, is basically a spiritual search to find out God's thoughts.

This brings us to the subject of the healing arts. Up till the end of this century, Christian theology has been discussed in terms of Neo-Platonism or Aristotelianism. Now we have to leave behind our former ways of trying to explain the Christian mystery and open ourselves to the great Hebrew intuition that the human being is a body-mind-spirit composite.

What might be the impact of the contemplative dimension of the Gospel on the various Christian denominations, contemporary society, and the global consciousness that seems to be emerging? At this conference the Christian denominations represented here have manifested the capacity to bond beyond denominational boundaries. Here in daily prayer and meditation we have opened to the living Christ and to the experience of the Spirit. Surely this is what our respective doctrinal persuasions are designed to bring about. In this assembly we have witnessed a paradigm of what unity among the varieties of Christian community can be or really is. Unity cannot be found in agreement in the details of doctrine. It can only be found in the lived experience of Christ that we have been tasting. The contemplative dimensions of the Gospel, cultivated by all the denominations, is the only way the unity, for which Christ prayed and died, will ever happen.

This will require significant shifts in our mindsets. Most of us have what we might call a religious superego--that is to say, the way we think (or have been brought up to think) dictates religious practice. In Northern Ireland this has led to shooting one another. In Rwanda, eighty percent of the people engaged in the massacres were Christians and most of these were Roman Catholics. What does that say about missionary work? The massacres proved that tribal blood is stronger than baptismal water. Certain missionary congregations are rethinking their ministry as missionaries in the light of what happened there. The preaching of the Gospel was just never heard.

One of the great visions that has emerged in our time--a new way of looking at missionary work and the relationship between the world religions--is the extraordinary witness of the seven Trappist martyrs of Algeria who were put to death by Muslim extremists. I mention them because they manifest a new kind of evangelization. It is the dialogue of presence even unto death. The monks lived among the impoverished Muslims around the monastery and shared with them their agricultural know-how, studied the Koran with them, offered them hospitality, and gave them help in whatever way they could. From the perspective of the Islamic extremists, that was their crime. The Koran says that if a holy man from another religion lives in solitude, no one can touch him. On the other hand, if he lives with the local people and reaches out to them, he loses his protected status and can be treated like other unwanted foreigners. Some of the monks' friends had been killed. They knew the dangers and had the choice to leave at any time. They held extensive dialogues among themselves to discern whether they should stay or leave. They opted to remain.

Their decision captures the essence of Christ's message which is to be present to people not just with words, but with one's whole being, ready to lay down one's life for one's friends and neighbors if that should be God's will. They did not desire martyrdom because they did not want to lay a guilt trip on anybody. They just wanted to live daily life in communion with their impoverished neighbors and to improve the quality of their own lives. They reflected on the two thieves on each side of Jesus on the cross and realized that they could be either one of those thieves. In light of that insight, they prayed for the oppressors as well as for the oppressed. They prayed not only for those who were being killed in that tragic situation but for the killers as well. And they prayed that if they themselves should be killed, their killers would be forgiven because of their good intention according to their lights. For them what mattered was to be totally at God's disposal, whatever this might mean, and to live in the present moment as best they could as witnesses to God's infinite tenderness for the Muslims around them.

Their letters have been circulated in France and read like a manual of nonviolence. The Fruits of the Spirit and the Beatitudes were at work in them, but at work in the simplest kind of way. They were not trying to make a splash, they just wanted to improve their daily lives by greater hospitality, smiling at the people they did not like, and putting up with people who interrupted their solitude. They wanted to be ordinary people with extraordinary love. Their witness will appear more strongly in the next century. How we live our ordinary lives reveals the face of Christ more than proselytizing. It is in fostering communion with our neighbors whatever their religion that the true face of Christ emerges.

These martyrs did not accept the concept of having enemies. For them the basic human vocation is to be a brother or sister. In the parable of the Prodigal Son where both sons acted outrageously, the Father did not ask either of them to do penance. He just asked them to live together in peace. That was all. That message, the heart of the Gospel, has to be communicated by who we are and how we live.

Contemplative practices are totally in the service of that project. What the Christian religion might contribute to global spirituality is the personal love of the Father in Jesus Christ for every human being. To love one another as Christ has loved us is the goal of Christianity. Christ is the enlightened one. It is to him that all our practices and rituals are pointing.

What form might a Christian contemplative contribution take to the emerging spiritual consciousness in the coming millennium? It seems to me that one major contribution is to form new types of communities that support communion in contemplative prayer and in finding new expressions of it. The love of God is so powerful that no one can just sit on it. It is bound to express itself. We have to think not just of praying together but how we can reach out and support each other in helping those in prison, the homeless, the hungry, the oppressed, everyone in need. Above all, direct attention to the most unbearable problem in the world today, which is the destitution of the poor. Jesus said: "The poor you will always have with you." But destitution is something else. That is our responsibility. It is not God's will. Whatever the benefits of the market economy, if it does not do something about the one-sidedness of the global economy, it will not last. It will simply disintegrate like all other forms of government that are not inspired by the values of the Gospel or at least by good human values.

The Spirit may be asking the Christian denominations to join forces with each other and with the other world religions in addressing human needs and social issues. The God in us is calling us to serve the God in others.

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Excerpted from The Better Part by Fr. Thomas Keating

You can obtain a copy by visiting the Contemplative Outreach Bookstore.