Abdullah: An Introduction to Receptive Ecumenism

I remember how cold it was, the mountain air biting at our faces as we waited for transportation. At least I wasn’t alone. Less than a year into my Peace Corps experience in rural Morocco I had received the blessing (by the grace of God) of a true friend.

Mohamed was a bright and principled young man from humble beginnings – Moroccan, Berber, Muslim. He studied law at the local university, though he had little chance of actually finding a job after graduation. In Morocco either you had money and could buy your way into extending that privilege or you didn’t, translating into a hard life of sustenance and survival (education notwithstanding).  Despite his family’s struggles, Mohamed was always positive, even playful, a trait that warmed my heart on cold days like these.

It all happened in a moment. A small group of teenage boys began to laugh and point. Mohamed and I turned to see the object of their amusement. I will never, for the rest of my life, forget what I saw.

It was Abdullah.

A living portrait of abject poverty, Abdullah’s hair was matted and unkept, his skin darkened and scabbed from constant exposure, his teeth rotten and abscessed. His pants were stained and tattered. A broken sandal flopped loosely on one foot, swollen and black. The other foot was bare, trudging through the fresh snow, tender and red. And in a final measure of unfathomable despair, Abdullah wore no shirt, no coat, his sunken torso exposed to the wind and the cold.

Frozen with shock, in what seemed like an eternity, I stood, slack-jawed and dumb. And while I did nothing, while the adolescents mocked, I witnessed one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. Mohamed, without meditation or delay, sprang up, walked directly toward Abdullah, removed his jacket, placed it around Abdullah’s shoulders, whispered gently into his ear, and guided him down the road.

I have reflected on that story for over 15 years and I can barely hold back the tears now.  It would have been enough if the story ended there. But the most amazing part is that Mohamed didn’t own another jacket. After giving his coat away in a moment of uncalculated compassion, Mohamed went the rest of the winter without a coat.

This event changed me. It challenged me. It haunted me. 

It was like the Jesus that I was reading about in Scripture was right there, alive and well, in the life of one who did not even acknowledge his divinity. It gave me my first undeniable encounter of the hidden Christ, disguised in “the other.” It forever dismantled my simplistic caricatures that assumed (somehow) that God only works in Christians, and perhaps more pointedly, in Christians like me.

I believe that this event marks the beginning of a journey that I continue to travel today – a road recently described as “receptive ecumenism.”[1] By opening my heart to “the other” I can see what I can learn. With humility and self-criticism, I can acknowledge my own shortcomings (and that of my religious tradition) without losing my unique identity as a Catholic, as a Christian, as a human being. I can, with the full authority of the Church, “reject nothing of what is true and holy in [the other]” while maintaining my unique confidence in Jesus Christ.[2]

“I was naked and you gave me clothing,” Jesus said.[3] Lord, open my eyes to see you where I least expect it. Lord, open my heart to love you in the broken and downtrodden. Lord, open my mouth that I might proclaim your goodness wherever it is found. Amen.

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[1] See Paul D. Murray, ed., Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008).

[2] Nostra aetate (Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions), 2.

[3] Mt 25:36.