Word to the Wise
Friday, August 25, 2017 - Friday in the 20th Week in Ordinary Time
[Ruth 1:1, 3-6, 14b-16, 22 and Matt 22:34-40]But Ruth said, "Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you! For wherever you go, I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God." [Ruth]
These beautiful words from the Book of Ruth speak to possibilities that are not easy to attain but are attainable with love. Ruth was a Moabite, not a Jew. She was married to a Jew. When Ruth's husband died, her mother-in-law offered to allow her to return to her Moabite kin. Ruth replied with the words quoted above. These words are often read at weddings as an expression of the new bond between the man and woman that creates a new family.
Cultural and ethnic bonds are very strong. They needed to be at one time for sheer survival. In our own time, these bonds are under some stress. In a multi-cultural secular republic like our own, what does it mean to be "American." For our own religious tradition, the question arises, "What does it mean to be 'Catholic?'" I recall vividly the "Catholic" culture of the 1950's, which I see only when there is a celebration of the "extraordinary rite" of the Eucharist, dating from the establishment of the Roman rite after the Council of Trent!
What allowed Ruth to transcend her own cultural roots and security was the bond of love and loyalty that tied her closely to her mother-in-law's Jewish people. I have seen this kind of love in situations where one party to a marriage accepted a new religious loyalty because of their love for the one they intended to marry. What is it that binds us to our faith, our friends, our country? There is a hint of an answer in the gospel scripture today that puts love of God and neighbor at the center of all life. Perhaps we can find the way of transcending those bonds that work against the kind of love that Ruth shows and that Jesus places at the top of all values. AMEN
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