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Editorial
The Editors

Jubilate Deo

As this issue of SIDIC is being prepared for publication, the Jewish people are beginning a new year in a stance of awe before the Holy One - the profound attitude of mind and heart which marks their observance of the High Holy Days. Meanwhile, Christians throughout the world are preparing to begin the month of November with the feast of All Saints, calling to mind that "...saints are the initiators and the creative models of the holiness which happens to be right for, and is the task of their particular age." (The Mystery of Holiness by Robert Ellsberg, Sojourners, Sept.-Oct., 1997)
What is this kedushah which seeks to permeate time and space - this holiness to which we are called by the One who said to the people through Moses: "You shall be holy, for ! the Lord your God am holy" (Leviticus 19:1-2)? How is this holiness seeking to be expressed today in a society where a deepening spiritual vacuum lacks a depth dimension marked by the distinctive and the value-laden?
Attention to the signs and messages of our age reveals increasing violence in the context of self-centered grasping for power and material goods accompanied by escalating poverty, fear, alienation and disorientation. As persons struggle to eke out an existence or madly compete to amass wealth and power, how can one pause to value and savor the holiness of time? In the midst of the ecological crisis, cries for compassion for the earth seek to open our eyes to the holiness of that which the Creator called "good". Some Protestant Christians are perhaps responding prophetically today as they take a new look at the importance of Sainthood - not to apply the simple answers of the miraculous to humanity's current complex problems, but to call attention to the models of human greatness and vulnerability through which God's power and holiness are actively revealed today.
In this issue Edward Kaplan and Joan Chittister write from within the context of the contemporary world whose accomplishments "are both magnificent and atrocious." The conviction of both is that a passion for holiness is needed to guide human morality and commitment in face of the urgent tasks of today. On the 25th Anniversary of Abraham Joshua Heschel's death, Kaplan searches Heschel's life and writings to help unveil the holy dimension as it is guiding the Jewish path today. Attentive to the historical development of the Roman Catholic process of beatification and canonization, Chittister expediently recalls that the holy ones of Christianity are those who have "put on the mind of Christ and so put on the broken heart of the world."
Louis Jacobs and Herbert Alphonso look at the tradition of holiness in their respective Jewish and Roman Catholic heritages. Along with Kaplan and Chittister's contributions they help us understand that: "Great saints act as looms, so to speak. They take into their lives the main threads of the heritage, pull them into their own story, and produce original cloth spun out of both old and new. In vision and practice, they are funnels for the tradition, giving it a compactness and a relevance which re-patterns the imagination of their contemporaries." (Saints and Ecology by Thomas F. McKenna, New Theology Review, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1994)