What is at the heart, the central core of the spirituality of interreligious dialogue? As we face that question, we find several responses that come together into a luminous knot formed by several threads of gold, as follows:

1. To search for God is to enter into a dialogue with his plan.

The qualities needed in the search for God are exactly the same as those needed for dialogue.

God is the ultimate Author, the Mystery who calls out to us, who knows us and loves us. Our age is responsive to this mysterious God and to his call. In order to approach this Mystery we need humility, receptivity, silence and a willingness to listen. We must also hold ourselves ready to adapt our own schemes and to let ourselves be illuminated. These are precisely the qualities that will encourage a sincere and fruitful dialogue. In return the dialogue allows us to develop these spiritual qualities fully.

2. Dialogue sends us back to the experience of God.

To search for God in dialogue with other religious traditions helps us to understand the spiritual gifts spread out by God in the other religions. So we assume a humble attitude that helps us to put our point of view into perspective. From that point onwards we open ourselves to a God who is always bigger and, thus, truer.

To search for God in dialogue forces us to question the essentials of our faith by pruning the accretions of history. In so far as we are a community of faith, to search for God in dialogue helps us to refine our historical memory of human aspirations that are mixed up with the search for God.

3. A spirituality of interreligious dialogue depends on inter-relation, one of the most precious values of our time.

Throughout history the most enduring types of spirituality have been those that have been able to encompass the most serious and weighty concerns of the different epochs. We ourselves have to live at the beginning of the 21st century, a period characterized by ease of communication and multiplicity of relationships. That is why our age needs a spirituality of interreligious dialogue to represent and embody the desire for social and cultural exchange.

4. Today the search for God cannot live outside a context and cannot be either predetermined or isolated. It must be a search in dialogue.

For the men and women of our time, who live in an inter-connected world and who need a spirituality of dialogue and of interreligious dialogue, theories are not enough; they need life and experience. For this reason, questions about God take the form of a search that is experiential rather than intellectual. Consequently on our way of experience we encounter believers from different faiths. Furthermore, on our journey of dialogue we realize that it is not possible to search for God in the abstract or to look for him by means that are vague or diffuse. Each believer must be deeply and enthusiastically rooted in his own religious tradition and in the theological working out of that tradition.

It is not possible to search for God in isolation; we must take account of other religious traditions. But in this journey of searching that is common to all, we will find ourselves confronted with different approaches to God and with different ways of relating to him that we can neither ignore nor dispense with. Such differences must engage each other through the means of dialogue.