Reaching out through dialogue

WE know that in spite of our tremendous communication technologies, we still are not yet connected in peaceful and meaningful unity and harmony among ourselves. In fact, we can observe the contrary—that the more sophisticated our communication technologies are, the more divided among ourselves we seem to be. Biases and unbridled attachments to our views, beliefs, lifestyles, etc., still prevail.

We have to realize that we actually have the duty to reach out to everyone, especially those who are different from us or even are opposed to us. They can even be opposed to God.

That encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman by the well (cfr. Jn 4,5-24) precisely tells us so. We just have to learn how to reach out to others, especially those in the peripheries. And for this, we have to develop what we may describe as a universal heart.

This way we would be imitating Christ who initiated a dialogue with us by creating and redeeming us, God becoming man in the process, and willing to go to the extent of bearing all the sins of men, as St. Paul said, to bring about our salvation. (cfr. 1 Tim 2,4) This is the ultimate motive that would lead us to have a universal heart in spite of our differences and conflicts.

Toward this end, we have to learn how to be patient, how to rise above our personal things and learn how to give our heart to God and to everybody else. This obviously will require of us a certain sportsmanship, a certain insensitivity that is of the kind that can welcome and accommodate the charity of God in our heart. We have to learn to listen and not just hear others, to look and not just to see them.

We have to learn how to suffer with the others, how to be compassionate, how to make as our own the conditions of the others out of the love of God and souls. Christ himself did all these.

But to attain these qualities, we have learn how to have dialogue, first with God and then with everybody else. Only when we know how to dialogue with God can we also know how to dialogue with others.

Our problem often is that we give little importance to the value of dialogue. And if we do some dialoguing, we fail to go all the way, or we approach it with wrong attitudes and inadequate dispositions and ways.

In many Church documents, the constant recourse to dialogue is abundantly recommended. It’s a way to build and strengthen our unity, tenuous as it is, considering the many and often competing forces that go into it. We have to learn how to overcome or at least go above our biases and preferences that can involve even our beliefs and convictions, without compromising what truly matters—truth in charity, charity in truth.

Dialogue actually fosters the sense of solidarity among ourselves. It facilitates the identification and the pursuit of the common good that ultimately is to be with God. Of course, the pursuit of the common good will always involve a process. It will be a work in progress that advances the more we dialogue with God and among ourselves.

We should always take the initiative, always looking for any opening or possibility for dialogue. Even in those moments when our prudent judgments would tell us to keep quiet for a while, we should never extinguish the desire and the effort to enter into dialogue with others no matter how different they are from us.

Of course, we have to realize that our success in this endeavor would depend first of all on our authentic identification with Christ. Thus, we can never exaggerate our need to be close to him and to follow his example all the way to the cross.