The spirit of Assisi
(27.10.2011)
Assisi 1986: an experience of peace and dialogue of pilgrim believers (p. Tecle Vetrali)
The secret of the successful event in Assisi lies in wanting to provide an opportunity to relive the poor man of Assisi's experience with a renewed experience: this is effectively what it was, rather than a plain commemoration or celebration: experience involves the whole person and is able to guarantee a true encounter and a deep dialogue. Saint Francis was the instigator, from Assisi he teaches us that peace operators cannot exist if beforehand they have not opened their heart to the gift of Christ's peace.
Assisi hosted a true experience of dialogue. Delegates of the main important religions of the world attended as believers, not as representatives of different cultures. The very faith in a transcendent God led them to Assisi to ask for and not to negotiate peace. This same faith made such a wide and deep dialogue possible. True dialogue is only possible between people who are able to egress from themselves and strip off the sense of absoluteness; only those who don't think to be owners of truth are able to dialogue.
It has become a common assumption to downgrade dialogue to discussion. To start a true relationship involving the entire person, dialogue must begin from the heart. Only the heart can create a synchrony among believers of all faiths in order to help them overcome solicitations of a world leveled by a flat and materialistic vision of life.
A qualifying aspect of the event in Assisi was that of pilgrimage. The experience became possible only when all participants chose to become pilgrims; that is, leave their own home, their enclosures: no one can build unity and peace until we reserve the right to manage our own home ground and our personal criteria interaction and relationships with others. Everyone, including the Pope of Rome, went as pilgrims to the house of the 'poor man who,' after renouncing everything, became a credible arbiter of a peaceful coexistence.
Pilgrimage promotes sharing, reciprocal support and unity. A true experience of peace could only have been accomplished by people who were believers, Pilgrims, gathered in Assisi, brought together by the one Spirit through different paths and who in the most eloquent expression of their experience of God, through prayer, traced the foundation for a credible hope of peace among people.
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