Jerusalem: Inter-religious meeting explores faith and memory

From August 5 - 16, 2018, the Elijah Institute in Jerusalem offers a summer session to enrich interfaith dialogue. This year the central theme of the course is the place of memory in different religions. On August 8, at the Saint Joseph Benedictine Center, Bishop Boulos Marcuzzo, Latin Patriarchal Vicar for Jerusalem and Palestine and two other representatives of the Christian Churches discussed with the participants the question of memory in the life of Christians.

As part of the summer session of the Elijah Institute, Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein invited three Christian leaders: Most Reverend Jules Joseph Zerey, Greek Patriarchal Melkite Emeritus of Jerusalem, Bishop Boulos Marcuzzo, Latin Patriarchal Vicar for Jerusalem and Palestine and Fr. Koryoun Baghdasaryan, Chancellor of the Armenian Patriarchate and Dean at the Armenian Seminary in Jerusalem.

Each prelate was invited to address the place of memory in the Christian faith. Fr Baghdasaryan recalled a large number of Christian martyrs who have marked the history of the Church. For Bishop Zerey, it was the liturgy that commemorates the faith of the origin. Bishop Marcuzzo emphasized the universality of the Church and its missionary dimension: the Catholic Church keeps in memory and makes live the will of Christ to make known the love of God to all men, without exception.

The participants, who were religious and lay people from different faiths and backgrounds, showed great interest and questioned the bishops and the priest present on their vision of the unity of believers.

For more than twenty years, the Elijah Institute has offered all those interested in interreligious dialogue a spiritual time of formation, meeting, and visits to open up to different religions. This summer program allows students, religious leaders, and interdenominational activists to deepen their interreligious experience, to discover theological roots and to engage in interfaith dialogue in Jerusalem.