As we become more and more involved in grasping and deepening our own tradition, dialogue helps us to become more discriminating. To enter into relationship is also to relativize. Questioning can lead to a deepening of our faith and be a source of spiritual enrichment. In this era of globalization, it invites monasteries to enter into contact with monastics of other religions who have now become our next-door neighbors. The first concerns hospitality.
Interreligious dialogue expands the ancient practice of monastic hospitality.
It is no longer just a matter of welcoming guests to the monastery, sharing our prayer and table with them, conversing with them. Hospitality involves welcoming the spirituality of the other as a valid path to God, seeing in its charism and practices an expression of a monastic intuition common to all humanity, and allowing this encounter to lead us to a deeper understanding of the place of Christianity in the plan of salvation. The second concerns contemplation. Intermonastic dialogue can be a way of enriching our understanding and appreciation of contemplation, and also of recovering parts of our own tradition, for example, attention to the details of daily life, openness to the cosmos, the importance of the body. The practice of dialogue in our community can be approached from three different perspectives.