To my way of thinking, that which constitutes the heart of dialogue is the rhythmic, revolving movement grounded in the Trinity (perichoreisis/circumincession). In order to symbolize this theological vision I offer you a tile, a Japanese tile that will, perhaps, help us to enter into this mystery. I see in this image a very eloquent image of the mystery of dialogue and of the mystery of God.

I cannot show you the tile itself but only a drawing that reproduces the pattern on it. The pattern is made up of three identical elements in a dynamically circular movement surrounded by thirteen points. On the tile these forms are in high relief. For Tibetans, these three elements evoke the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.

I should like to take this tile as a starting point and suggest that we see in it the present situation of our different Traditions within the plan of salvation when believers meet. We know what privileged moments were the Prayer of Assisi in 1986, the Interreligious Assembly of Rome in 1999 and our experience of monastic interreligious dialogue, especially the spiritual impact that taking part in an “Exchange” holds for each of the participants. On these occasions we experience “the mutual attraction exercised by the same Someone,” to use the words of Father Teilhard de Chardin. Various questions arise: Are we outside the mystery of God? Is God in a “beyond” over and apart from us? Or is he not rather the Mystery in which we evolve and in which we make present his fullness? O you who are religious, who is the Ultimate? Who is your God? Who is my God? Who is our God? Because of our religious convictions, we are brothers and sisters, hostile brothers and sisters sometimes, but why? Who is this Absolute who stimulates each of us? These are not just words, they are a living reality. Is it impossible to imagine that, by means known to God alone, believers are caught up into the very dance of God—the—Trinity, are called to participate in the intra-Trinitarian dialogue and in communion with the Three Persons?

There are three dimensions that are integral to these experiences of dialogue:

The first is that of identity: each believer is there, grounded in his or her specific tradition.

The second is that of forgetfulness and emptying of self: each one has within both a place for listening to what is said by the other, to the life that each lives, and a path of conversion and of deepening of his or her own faith.

The third is that of silent communion in the lived experience, of an attention uniting itself to the expressions of praise.

Do not these three dimensions of dialogue find their origin in the divine revolving movement of perichoreisis? Let me invite you to contemplate the center of the tile. The dynamic nature of the forms suggests that readiness to receive is a gift, and that the gift is readiness to receive, without limit, in a unique movement of the Three, without beginning and without end.

Due to the constraints of language, we separate the three Persons by a threefold contemplation of their identity, of their self-emptying, of their communion.

One is the Father, who begets the only and beloved Son, who is creator, who is not constrained by outside forces, who is in movement in the Word, who brings forth more than just things, who brings forth creativity itself, who creates liberty.

One is the Son, only-begotten, beloved of the Father and loving him entirely, Word who originates the dialogue beyond all expression between Father and Son, Word who upholds the universe, Word made flesh in Jesus Christ, in the emptying-out (kenosis) of the Incarnation, Word who effects the salvation of all creation.

One is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, the very Being of their communication in love, the very Being of their eternal dialogue; Breath of God whom Christ makes available by communicating him at Pentecost, through the Church, to humanity and to all creation, for the resurrection and the salvation of all flesh.

And these Three are One!

It is this overflowing love from the Trinity that Jesus depicted in word and in deed on the eve of his death: he who is both master and Lord washes the feet of his disciples, he calls them 𔄞friends” and entrusts this precept to them by offering them a share in his own life. God who reveals himself in Jesus is a God who kneels in front of his own creatures. His greatness is in the gift he makes of himself in his overwhelming desire for communion.

Since we are speaking about the spirituality of dialogue, it is fitting that our expression and our conviction are found to be equally true in our experience as a human person and as a baptized person.

We acknowledge ourselves as creatures, conscious of the gift of life, but also painfully marked by our finiteness and our lack of permanence, destined to die unless we enter into that movement of conversion and of the gift of self to others that makes us brothers and sisters in humanity.

We proclaim that through Christ, in the Church, we are adopted children of God.

There is here a call to a loving forgetfulness and emptying of self so as to allow the Spirit to conform us to the image of the Son wholly turned towards the Father. The fruit of this self-forgetfulness is already granted; it is the mystery of the indwelling of the Trinity, foretaste of that total participation in their fellowship. Our vocation as sons and daughters also challenges us to open within ourselves a “Christic space” (see Father Benoît Standaert, meeting of DIM/MID, Meschede, 1998). The model of this truth is Elizabeth: at the time of the Visitation, there is within her a space in which the child dances for joy when the voice of his Saviour’s Mother reaches his hearing. In this Christic space each person may be received, may meet Christ, may be welcomed together with an expectant, even if obscure, longing for the gospel.

I should like to share with you the lived experience of Shoei-san, a Japanese Buddhist nun, and her wish to receive Communion during the Eucharist. The fact of not being able to do this, despite her deeply felt wish, was a very painful experience for her during her first stay in our monastery on the occasion of a Spiritual Exchange. Later, at the time of the second Exchange, the arrangement of the community had been modified in such a way that she was able to pass on to another Sister the Body and Blood of Christ. At the time of the shared evaluation, she said with a deep sense of joy, “I experienced the power of Christ, for as I passed on the chalice, I inhaled the Blood of Christ”! In her “Buddhist space” there was room for dialogue with and communion in Christ. And for myself also, no doubt, there was a “Christic space” for welcoming the followers of Buddha, when, at the time of the evening offering in the Jokhang Temple (Lhasa), the officiating monk called on me to perform the ritual bows in their holy of holies.

To sum up, we may say that the mystery of God that dwells within me is the same mystery that inhabits the other, for it is the Spirit who brings about mystical and spiritual unity: Spirit poured out at the moment of Christ’s crucifixion, from the very heart of Christ, Spirit poured forth on to every human person, Spirit who introduces us into the movement of the communion of the Three Persons.

Let us come back one last time to our tile. As a friend once suggested, let us imagine that the elements of this static representation were to free themselves from their support and to begin to rotate. The three forms would then be perceived as making but one single form; their center-seeking force would draw the separate points together into their own unity.

The root of dialogue is in the heart of the friends of God, truly present there. It is our task to search diligently and untiringly for an ever more authentic expression of this root so that our entire life may proclaim our sharing in the divine perichoreisis.