Word to the Wise
Thursday, July 30, 2009 - Thursday in the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
[Exodus 40:16-21, 34-38 and Matthew 13:47-53]Every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.
In the past decade, during my campus ministry, I noticed (as have many campus ministers) a fascination among students with certain rituals and devotions from Catholic heritage that had been "gathering dust" since the Second Vatican Council. This phenomenon also appears in perhaps a more intense form among seminarians for both dioceses and religious orders. To some folks of my "vintage" (I entered religious life during the council, 1964) this has the effect of seeming to push the clock back to a pre-conciliar way of being Catholic. To others it has the effect of "restoring" what is the rightful patrimony of the Catholic faithful! Are we trying to pour old wine into new skins? The subject is a very complex one involving theology, psychology, history, culture, language, etc. etc. I have often said a prayer of gratitude that I experienced the Catholic church that these students and seminarians believe they are "rediscovering." This has enabled me to explain that some of the observances they want to "bring back" are beautiful in themselves but lack the necessary broader theological and social context that made those observances meaningful in their time. Several of the things that most attracted me to the Dominican Order (particularly our Dominican Rite of the Mass) disappeared shortly after I entered the Order in the wake of all the liturgical reform! To "restore" these without having a broad common understanding of them would be sheer anachronism and not good ministry. On the other hand, other parts of that tradition have successfully found their way back into Dominican practice because they could be integrated and explained in terms that are contemporary. (I still harbor some feeble hopes about our Dominican "Ordinary of the Mass!) It seems to me that this challenge clearly falls in to Jesus' image about the scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven. Every once in awhile something we put in the attic shows itself useful and good in a new context. We shouldn't be afraid to go up there and see if we have something that might help us, but neither should we make nostalgia our principal guide of action! AMEN
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