Metropolitan Tikhon attends Georgetown gathering for peace
His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon, was among the representatives of the Christian, Islamic, Jewish and Sikh traditions who gathered at Georgetown University here on Wednesday, December 16, 2015 for an “Interfaith Event for Peace, Inclusion and Understanding” in the wake of the attacks by Muslim extremists in Paris and San Bernardino, CA.
Georgetown President John J. DeGioia opened the hour-long event by welcoming the hundreds of participants.
“We must not allow these things to change us,” said Donald Cardinal Wuerl, the Catholic Archbishop of Washington, in the first of a series of reflections. “The actions of a few must never change all of us.
“Acts of evil, acts of terror happen because there are those who are willing to do them, and then there are those who are willing to be silent,” Cardinal Wuerl said, commenting that the event at Georgetown was about refusing to remain silent and condemning intolerance.
Others presenting reflections included Talib M. Shareef, Imam and President, The Nation’s Mosque, Masjid Muhammad; Senior Rabbi M. Bruce Lustig, Washington Hebrew Congregation; and Georgetown University student Laila Brothers, who shared her personal experiences.
“I know there is fear and unease around the world,” said US Vice President Joe Biden in his closing address. “That fear, though, is unacceptable and completely counterproductive…. When we turn our backs on the victims of persecution, we abandon everything we say we’re about.”
Also present was US House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
As the only Orthodox Christian leader present, Metropolitan Tikhon thanked Vice President Biden “for his words and his solidarity with those who have spoken today, some very boldly, and his support for the dignity of human beings during these difficult times” before delivering the closing prayer, the text of which appears below.
Through the Georgetown Orthodox Christian Fellowship [OCF], Orthodox Christianity has maintained a visible presence on the Georgetown Campus for three decades under the OCF’s chaplain, Archpriest Constantine White, who also serves as Rector of Saint Matthew Church, Gaithersburg, MD.
Closing Prayer offered by Metropolitan Tikhon
adapted from the Service for the Increase of Love and the Uprooting of All Animosity and Hatred
O Lord our God, our Father and our Creator, we have gathered here before You as Your diverse children. We are conscious of how far we are from loving You, loving each other and loving Your world. In Your mercy, look down upon the ground of our heart in which love has dried up and is cruelly overgrown with thorns of prejudice, fearfulness, and self-preoccupation.
As You are the Source of all good, we entreat You: uproot all our dark passions, indifference, suspicion, cowardice and hypocrisy. Open the eyes of our hearts to recognize one another as brothers and sisters; to welcome one another and to rejoice in all that is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, excellent and worthy of praise; and to remember what Saint Silouan reminds us of, that “our brother is our life.”
Give us the desire to love You with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Enable us to love others with the sacrificial and self-emptying love that we see in your Servant Jesus Christ, Who comes to us in extreme humility.
O All-compassionate Lord, establish in us Your Love, that we may truly love not only our brothers, sisters and friends, but our enemies as well, and do good to those who hate us. Establish this firmly in our hearts, that we seek on earth not our own purposes, but that which is to Your glory, and the building up of our neighbor, our nation and our world.
For You are the fountain of Good and the Abyss of Love for all human beings and all Your Creation, and to You we give glory, to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.