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Rafqa, Mariam, Hindiyya. Avril M. Makhlouf 3 Isaac of Nineveh, John of Dalyatha and Eastern Spirituality

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Rafqa, Mariam, Hindiyya. Avril M. Makhlouf 3 Isaac of Nineveh, John of Dalyatha and Eastern Spirituality ONE IN CHRIST CONTENTS VOLUME 44 NUMBER 2 ARTICLES Three Christian Women of the Arab Orient: Rafqa, Mariam, Hindiyya. Avril M. Makhlouf 3 Isaac of Nineveh, John of Dalyatha and Eastern Spirituality. + Antoine Audo SJ 29 The Renewal of the Coptic Catholic Church: Grappling with Identity and Alterity. Fadel Sidarous SJ 49 'Communion and Witness'. Renewed Liturgy and the Eastern Churches: a vision for the future. Robin Gibbons 64 Orientale Lumen. Ecumenical Dialogue in the Tradition of Vatican II: a Monastic Perspective. Nikola Proksch OSB 81 Contemporary Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue in the Patriarchate of Antioch. Demetrios Charbak 95 Nicolas Lossky: an Interview with Thierry Marteaux OSB 101 Modern Catholic Thought on Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. Anthony O'Mahony 111 Reviving the Gender Agenda: a human development approach. Trish Madigan OP 136 Episkope: a recent study of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue in Australia. Gerard Kelly 153 Christian Dialog as Symphonic Unity: Lessons on Non-Contrastive Language-Use from Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart. Anastasia Christine Wendlinder 168 REPORTS & EVENTS 'One Teacher': Doctrinal Authority in the Church. The Groupe des Dombes Report. Christianne Méroz and Bernard Sesboüé SJ 186 The Synod of Bishops: the Catholic Church in the Middle East. + Antoine Audo SJ 196 BOOK REVIEWS 201 2 ONE IN CHRIST VOL.44 NO.2 EDITORIAL Part 1 of this volume focused on more specifically Western concerns. However, in refocusing on the East, we are confronted with a set of topics that are of crucial concern, for all Churches, in any part of the world. And not only for Christian churches. Globalization has, willy nilly, helped put questions of identity high on all agendas, religious, political, cultural. The overlap of these agendas is as great as ever; but perhaps more difficult to ignore. Our Eastern focus is prompted by the Synod for the Catholic Church in the Middle East held in Rome, 10-24 October last. Issues about ecclesial identity, discussed in many of the following pages, find their echo in the political arena. Thus, words spoken in Indonesia last November by President Obama are apposite: 'We can choose to be defined by our differences ... or we can choose to do the hard work of finding common ground'. This journal's starting-point is epitomised by our opening articles, demonstrating how diverse traditions—in this case Syriac and Western—announce, symphonically, the great Tradition of conversion to the mind of Christ. A critical component of discussions about identity, not least in religious matters, is that of gender. It is troubling if this has become a side-issue on the ecumenical agenda. Its discussion in this issue is especially welcome. The Groupe des Dombes Report, 'One teacher': doctrinal authority in the church, presented below,1 concludes as do we with words of Bruno Chenu: 'Every Christian is called to be a "universal brother" or a "universal sister" wherever they live. It would be a wonderful contribution if globalization were to open each human being to the possibility of an identity based, not on opposition or exclusion, but on relationship with others, in the awareness of a legitimate otherness and of an indelible resemblance, so that ultimately, in a Pauline or Irenaean dynamic, "God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28).' 1 See pp. 186-95. For the passage quoted see Bruno Chenu, L'Église sera-t-elle catholiQue? (Paris: Bayard, 2004), 159. 3 THREE CHRISTIAN WOMEN OF THE ARAB ORIENT: RAFQA, MARIAM, HINDIYYA Avril M. Makhlouf ∗ The focus of this paper is Eastern Catholic mysticism as articulated by three Catholic women in the modern Middle East, each positioned at the axial point of a theological and cultural interchange between the Latin Catholic West and the Syriac Catholic East, especially as expressed by the Maronite Church tradition. Their lives span 1720–1914, a period which saw tumultuous change in the Middle East, and the emergence of a distinctive Middle Eastern Catholic ecclesial and religious culture. RafQa, Mariam and Hindiyya contribute uniQuely to understanding Eastern Catholic thought and theology and to the development of a wider canon for the study of Christian spirituality in the modern world. Introduction These three women all belonged to the Eastern rites of the Roman Catholic Church. Rafqa is a canonized saint, Mariam was beatified recently and Hindiyya remains under scrutiny. They lived in the period 1720–1914 and adequate records remain of their lives. All three women have the roots of their spirituality in the Syriac liturgical and theological tradition of the Christian Church, a tradition best known today as it appears in the Maronite rite to which Rafqa and Hindiyya belonged.1 While Mariam was baptized in the Melkite or Greek ∗ Avril Mary Makhlouf, formerly of the Institute of Christian Oriental Studies, the Catholic University of Washington DC, died in September 2007. While on a visiting fellowship at Heythrop College she wrote and presented the present article. Makhlouf had a particular interest in Arabic Christian literature in which she was a pioneering scholar. Her other area of research was the history, spirituality and theology of the Maronite Church. 1 For the origins of the Maronite Church see Harald Suermann; 'Die Lage des Klosters Mar Maron', Parole de l'Orient, 13 (1986): 197-223; H. Suermann, Die Gründungsgeschichte der Maronitischen Kirche, Orientalia Biblica et Christiana, 10 (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1998); H. Suermann, 'Maronite Historiography and Ideology', Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 54/3-4 (2002): 129-48; Shafiq Abouzayd, 'Maronite Church' in Blackwell Dictionary of 4 ONE IN CHRIST VOL.44 NO.2 Catholic rite and lived her life as a religious in Latin rite congregations, much of her life and actions show forth in a striking manner her Syriac heritage. This liturgical and theological tradition is one which has been much undervalued in the West. Until recently, it has lived in the shadow of the better known Greek and Latin rites. Because of the influence of Western European religious orders on the Christians of the Middle East during the last four centuries it is sometimes difficult to identify the Syriac elements in the spirituality of any given individual. What is of lasting fascination is that despite vastly different experiences, each of these women achieved a unique blending of the spiritualities to which she was exposed.1 Characteristic Features of Syriac Spirituality The Syriac spiritual tradition which developed in the early Christian centuries in the area now divided among the modern states of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel is one in which it could be said that liturgy is meant to be the celebration of the gift of life and where life itself should be a liturgy of worship. Kairos time is where the incarnation, birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ occur in one divine moment of simultaneous creation, redemption and sanctification. In Christ God is united with the temporal world. Eastern Christianity (2nd edn., Oxford: Blackwell, 2001): 305-8. For the contemporary revival of monastics and eremitical tradition see G.G. Hourani and A.B. Habchi, 'The Maronite Eremitical Tradition: A Contemporary Revival', Heythrop Journal, 45 (2004): 451-65; 'The Eremitical Traditon in the Maronite Church', Christianity in the Middle East: Studies in Modern History, Theology and Politics, ed. A. O'Mahony (London: Melisende, 2007), 500-38. 1 For Syriac spirituality see Susan Ashbrook Harvey, 'The Sense of a Stylite; Perspectives on Simeon the Elder', Vigiliae Christianae, 42 (1988): 376-94; Seely J. Beggiani, Early Syriac Theology (University Press of America, 1983); Sebastian Brock, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (Cistercian Publications, 1987); S. Brock, The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem the Syrian (Cistercian Publications 1984); S. Brock, The Wisdom of Saint Isaac the Syrian (Oxford: Fairacres Press, 1977); S. Brock, 'Clothing Metaphors as a Means of Theological Expression in Syriac Tradition', Variorum Studies in Syriac Christianity, 40 (1992); Bernard Heyberger, Les chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la Réforme catholiQue: Syrie, Liban, Palestine, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1994). MAKHLOUF RafQa, Mariam, Hindiyya 5 Human beings are joined to God not only through their spirit but also through their bodies. The supreme Liturgy, the Eucharist, is the sacred time, the sacred place where the presence of the living Christ, who is the link between the eternal and the mundane, is celebrated by all the worshippers. The Syriac writers, especially St Ephrem, emphasize that the worshipping Church in heaven is to be mirrored not only in the ecclesiastical body on earth but also in every individual believer. This fusion of the individual person with Christ should take place within each human being whose clothing with Christ has begun with Baptism, as Jesus himself was clothed with human nature in the Virgin’s womb. Through Baptism we are to regain the blessed state of the human being before the Fall. It is Christ’s own Baptism that initially joins us to Him both individually and collectively in a spousal relationship. Here we should note that whereas in European Catholic thought a spousal relationship is seen as a divine gift representing the pinnacle of mystical development, in the Syriac tradition it is seen as the normal state of the baptized person which of course has to be fully realized in a virtuous life. In both spousal spiritualities the notion of spouse has nothing to do with gender, the soul being seen as feminine in relation to God. Baptism is the first step in the process of the re-creation of the world, a step which makes our own union with Christ a possibility. The clothing with Christ therefore implies a special vesting of each of us with divinity.
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