Altar of the Crucifixion at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time



We all have many different traditions in our lives. Some of them involve family traditions, especially around birthdays and holidays. Even meals at those celebrations can have traditions connected to them. There are community traditions connected around events and celebrations. Even parishes have certain traditions that are unique to them. As a priest, I have learned that there are a great number of different traditions at each parish that I have been involved with. I have also learned that it is important for me to understand those traditions and respect them. I shouldn't come barging in and change everything just because I think I know how to do things best. In fact, I've gained a great deal of knowledge and wisdom simply by observing various parish traditions over the years.

People in general seem to like traditions. We like that we can look forward each year to a certain way of doing things. We can't help but think of all the memories of the past and we hope and pray that we can repeat the positive memories and avoid the negative ones. In an otherwise constantly changing world, is good to have those reliable traditions to fall back on.

Unfortunately, even traditions eventually come to an end. When I was growing up, my family had a tradition of getting together with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins for Christmas and Easter. Now that my cousins are married and have children of their own, making my aunts and uncles grandparents themselves, the old family traditions have changed and have been replaced by new ones. Some of you may have experienced similar changes in family traditions.

Community traditions end and change as well. As a community grows or shrinks and as other dynamics of the community change over time, traditions may gradually change to adjust to the community. The same can be said of parish communities too. We have all been going through quite a bit of transition over the last two and a half months as we have been clustering. Already we have had to change a few traditions in our parishes, but my hope is that the majority of our traditions remain the same. My point is that traditions can and do sometimes change.

God is of course the one thing in the entire universe that never changes. The Earth is always changing. Even rocks can erode over time and be shifted around. The universe is still expanding, meaning that the stars we see at night will look very different a million years from now. But God is constant. His love and mercy never change. Because God is Himself so unchanging, He also made certain things which He intended to be true from the beginning of time until the end.

Jesus speaks specifically about one of those truths in the Gospel for today. He is talking about what we call the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. “From the beginning of creation”, Jesus tells us, “God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” He refers to the very same passage that we heard in the first reading from Genesis. He is saying that from the very beginning, the Sacrament of Marriage is meant to be between one man and one woman. He is also talking about the permanence of marriage. Both of these statements fly in the face of what our society has been telling us. Many think it is okay to get married outside of the Church; many think that you can get a divorce and remarry as often as you like; many have come to believe that same sex marriages are good and the way of the future. But these readings show that God clearly has a interest in marriage (otherwise He never would have said anything about this topic), that it should be in a Church so that God can bless it, that it is meant to be a union that is for ever, and that it is meant to be between a man and a woman. Some things change in the world, but this teaching has not. It has been from the beginning.

Another truth that has not changed with the passage of time is the truth of respecting life. Sacred Scripture has a lot to say about respecting human life, and so the Catholic Church has long promoted respect for all human life from conception until natural death. October is respect life month and many people around the country are involved with 40 Days for Life and are praying outside of abortion clinics. When we say “respect life” in a Catholic Church, I get the impression that most people think of working to end abortions, but I would encourage us to keep in mind that we are called in other ways to respect human life as well. For instance, euthanasia is considered moral wrong, and the Catechism argues against the use of capital punishment. We are also called to respect the dignity of the human person. That means helping the poor and disenfranchised; helping the jobless to have jobs and workers to be given proper rights. It means visiting the sick and imprisoned. We don't have to all physically do each of these things, but we do need to support them and not try to stop our neighbors from doing their part either.

We are also called to take care of our common home. As you may know, Pope Francis released his latest Encyclical, called Laudato Si, this last May. The opening words in Latin are, “Laudato si, mi Signore”, which means, “Praise be to you, my Lord”. These words were taken from St. Francis of Assisi's famous prayer, “The Canticle of the Sun”. The Feast of St. Francis is October 4th. As this encyclical clearly shows, our Holy Father not only shares a name with the famous saint, but also a deep desire to care for the Earth that God has given to us. We are asked to look at how can we avoid wasting our natural resources and avoid putting harmful chemicals into it.

Again, none of what I have talked about is anything new. It isn't a change from out of the blue. God has been asking this of us from the beginning. Yes it can be a challenge, but God is asking us to meet this challenge with faith in Him and with a love for others.

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