Our Living Room

Visitors entering our house have been surprised to see two pictures with Muslim calligraphy on the right wall of our living room. The surprise has not been the same for Christians and Muslims. Muslim visitors are startled to see an attribute associated with Islam on display in our house and Christians wonder what we, a Christian community of Roman Catholic priests, have to do with a devotional object of the Muslim faith.

The two pictures in question are beautifully painted representations of two of the names of Allah. In Islam tradition Allah has 99 names or one hundred if one includes the name Allah itself. Recitation of the names is a devotional practice in Muslim piety using 99 or 33 prayer beads.

 

The two names we selected for our living room are Ar-Rahman, the All-compassionate, and Al-Wadud, the Loving One. We explain to our visitors that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, the Creator of all that exists and the Giver of all life. We may have our differences – and they are substantial indeed – but this does not take away that we have much in common as well. An acknowledgement of our similarities can bring us together. After all, we need each other, for all believers of whatever faith community live in a secular society in which faith itself is suspect, is considered irrational and even dangerous to human well-being.

The two names have been selected for a reason which we also explain to our visitors. They are closest to our own spirituality as Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. We try to live a spirituality of the heart, following Jesus Christ, who opened his heart to all kinds of people, especially those ignored by others. He was indeed a very compassionate and loving person, representing the Heart of God in this world.

We did not know it at the time, but by appropriating the two names we showed our ignorance as well. In Muslim tradition Ar Rahman is always taken together with Al Rahim. Both words are related to the quality of rahma, meaning mercy and compassion, and occur right in the opening verse of the Qur’an. Mistakenly we separated what Muslims keep together. Fortunately, no Muslim visitor ever pointed this out to us.

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