Reflections

Our new house in Aston will have a prayer room, one of the five bedrooms designated for that purpose. We like to have our daily Eucharistic celebration and we pray together after supper and the washing up in the evening.
I feel that our prayer room should somehow reflect our presence in a multicultural and multireligious neighbourhood. This can be done by not only having Catholic religious symbols displayed in our chapel but also representative objects of other religions. It would be lovely if these were given to us by our very neighbours. I don’t expect them to do so on their own initiative, however. A little prompting or soliciting may be needed, taking care that the size of their objects do not dwarf our traditional Catholic symbols. We would not want the picture of Jesus to be relegated to a subordinate position!
Actually it was he who shows the way how to deal with religious reality. He could be quite critical of basic aspects of his own Jewish religion, the Temple and the Law, and got into conflict with their keepers, the priests and the scribes. At the same time he praised the Samaritan leper, a person of another so-called inferior faith and the only one of the ten healed lepers who returned to thank him for his cure. The Parable of the Good Samaritan comes to mind too. He is is a truly outstanding example of compassion for all who pride themselves on their own faith and misjudge the heights to which other religions can bring their followers.
Ton