Word to the Wise
Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - Wednesday in the Third Week of Lent
[Deuteronomy 4:1, 5-9 and Matthew 5:17-19]Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill!
One of the great tensions in the Catholic Church, at least in the Latin Rite (to which most of my congregation belongs) is in the understanding of the meaning of the Second Vatican Council! On one hand there are those who stress the discontinuity of the council and its documents from the past. On the other hand there are those who stress the continuity with the entire tradition. Each hand accuses the other of "hijacking" the council for its own purposes of power, ideology, etc.. I found myself thinking of this tension in regard to the gospel passage today, which helps me to realize that the challenges of the present day are not new. The community for which the Gospel of Matthew was written appears to have been deeply rooted in Jewish tradition. Did Jesus represent a radical departure from that tradition, or did he represent continuity but in a new direction? We know that St. Paul represented the first position once he found he was making no headway with Jewish listeners! St. James and possibly, St. Peter (although I think he is closer to those of us in the middle who feel squeezed by the ends), stood up for the traditions in which they had come to know God. Yes, Jesus is the messiah, but does that mean we have to give up all the ways in which we have expressed our faith? Eventually the community took the position that the law and traditions had to be interpreted in the light of Jesus' teaching and not the other way around! It didn't happen overnight, but it did happen. There is an old canonical principle: Cura animarum suprema lex! (The care of souls is the highest law.) I believe that if we could be less concerned with what chalices should be made of and who should wash them at the end of Mass and pay more attention to how we can realize the communion we receive at Mass in our practical lives as Church outside of liturgical practice, we will be not only doing something new but we will also be in continuity with Jesus' new law! AMEN
config
view
logs
3840.0 KB
70 ms
4
