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changed and have been replaced by new ones.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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