This is my homily for this past weekend, the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C. The readings are here.
Who is my neighbor? I learned a lesson about being a good neighbor a couple of years ago. Some of you know I ride a bicycle. Two years ago, when the first outbreak of COVID had us all hermetically sealed in our homes, riding the bike was not just a way to get my heart pumping; it got me away from electronic screens and out of the house and allowed me to see some actual people out in our community.
On one occasion that year, I got more person-to-person interaction than I had expected. I was pedaling through the streets a few miles away from home, when I realized my bike had a flat tire. I wasn’t well prepared. Not only did I not have a repair kit with me, I didn’t have a cell phone, either. I was facing the prospect of having to wheel a disabled bicycle several miles; or alternatively I could have left the bike there along the parkway, walked home, and hope it was still there when I drove back to retrieve it. But there were some pedestrians in sight, so I decided to ask a few of them if they would mind letting me use their cell phone to call my wife.
The first guy I asked let me borrow his phone. I called my wife, but she didn’t pick up. I figured he’d take his phone back, walk away and wish my luck. But instead, he said, Wait here a moment: I’ll go get my car, and then I’ll drive you and your bike home. That would have been an extremely generous offer at any time. But during the early days of COVID, it was more than kind. If you recall, back in the summer of 2020, there were no COVID vaccines. The strain of the virus that was abroad at that time, the original strain, was more deadly than the variants which are out and about now. It was killing many Americans. This guy was offering to let me, a complete stranger with an unknown infection status, ride in his car with him. During that time of uncertainty and fear, I’m pretty sure a lot of people, maybe even most people, would have advised him not to what he was offering to do. I said, “Thanks, but are you sure?” He said he didn’t mind. So he fetched his car, we tossed my bike in the back, and he got me home.
As he drove, we chatted, and I learned he is a Christian – he attends one of the local Protestant churches. He was being a neighbor to me, because that is what Christians do: when we encounter people who need help, we’re help them, like the Good Samaritan. He got me and the bicycle home. A very nice guy, whom I haven’t seen since that day. I may never meet him again. But that day, he was a neighbor to me.
My plight that day wasn’t nearly as serious as the plight of the man in today’s parable. But I was a stranger that day who was having trouble, facing a problem that wasn’t easy to solve. And I was fortunate, because the man who helped me is a practitioner of what I call Good Samaritan spirituality. He was a neighbor.
This is how Good Samaritan spirituality works: some people, like the folks who do our Outreach ministry here, seek out people in need. And those volunteers are doing wonderful work. But there are times in our lives when God doesn't require us to go seek people who need help: he brings them to us and lays them at our doorstep, or right in front of us on the road.
Think of Good Samaritan spirituality this way: most of us will help a loved one who needs help. If our spouse or one of our children calls and says, “My bike broke down, can you come to get me?”, most of us will interrupt whatever we’re doing, in order to help. But what if one of our neighbors, with whom we’re only casually acquainted, rings our doorbell out of the blue and says, “Hi, I’m sorry to bother you. Can you help me? I need to get my mother to a doctor’s appointment, and my car won’t start”? Well – I would guess that, whether or not we would help, might depend. It might depend. If my neighbor has come over in the middle of my workday, which is always jam-packed with commitments and obligations, I might feel compelled to politely and regretfully decline, and wish her luck finding someone else to help.
Now, imagine it’s a complete stranger ringing my doorbell, saying, “I’ve run out of gas. Can you help me?” What would I do? Would I invite the person in, to the home where my wife and children are? I might look him over and decide whether or not I like the looks of him. On my not-so-good days, I might try to simply make him go away. I’ve got things to do.
That approach would make me like the priest or the Levite in today’s parable. Scholars tell us the priest and the Levite who passed by the man who had been beaten and left for dead in this parable, may have done so because they would have been on their way to Jerusalem for Temple service, and for them to touch a dead man (for so the man in the road may have appeared) would have rendered them ritually unclean, and therefore unable to fulfill their duty. In other words, they had important work, even important ministry, to do, and helping this man would have disrupted, not only their schedules, but their duties. Better to leave him be.
Good Samaritan spirituality challenges this human tendency to tell ourselves, “This stranger’s plight is not my problem.” Good Samaritan spirituality says, if you’re in trouble, then I will be a neighbor to you. It says, when the stranger rings our doorbell, we help him, even if it’s an inconvenient time. Helping this stranger in crisis is more important than my schedule.
But why should we do that? Why is it so important to practice Good Samaritan spirituality? Why interrupt our schedules to be a good neighbor? Well – as Jesus tells the story, the man in the parable was stripped, and beaten, and left for dead. Does that sound familiar? Jesus told us this parable while he was on his way to Jerusalem, where he himself would be seized by his enemies, and then stripped, and beaten, and left for dead.
We may think of Jesus as a mighty prince on his heavenly throne – and that’s not wrong. But Jesus was also a man who was bruised, broken and dying.
This man in today’s parable encountered various people. Some beat and robbed him; some ignored him; one helped him. Likewise, many people encountered Jesus on his way of the cross. Some, like the Roman soldiers, beat him and stripped him. Some simply watched the spectacle unfold. But there were those, too, who helped Jesus, and whom we remember even today: I think of Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus carry his cross. According to our tradition, Veronica wiped the face of Jesus. And someone offered Jesus something to drink as he hung upon the cross, when he said, “I thirst”.
The key to Good Samaritan spirituality is: when we give something to drink to the least of our brothers or sisters who is thirsty, we’re giving it to Jesus himself. Jesus once was a stranger in trouble. We practitioners of Good Samaritan spirituality understand: when we see a stranger in trouble, we might be seeing Jesus. By helping him, we also meet him.
Always liked that parable. There are lots of layers to it, but I think the straightforward message is that Christians are called to be Christ to others in personal encounters, not just by paying our taxes, or sending money and flowers.
ReplyDeleteI think your bike story reminds us that we have all met Good Samaritans, and when I am feeling mean and cynical, a pitfall of old age for me, I should remember those times.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteI particularly liked the connection you made between the Samaritan and experience of Jesus. We often forget how large a role the passion narratives play and disconnect Jesus as teacher from those narratives.
We like to view Jesus as the Good Samaritan and can easily identify others and even ourselves as being on occasion Good Samaritans. The reality is the God sees Jesus in the victims, and so should we.
Jack, thanks for picking up on that. I got the idea for making that kind of a connection from a book on preaching I'm reading at the moment, authored by Bill Keller, the noted Evangelical minister who has had a lot of success building a church in NYC. He used the example of the Gerasene demoniac, who was naked and abandoned to die outside the gates - again, like Jesus. One of his keys to being a good preacher is, the entire Bible is about Jesus, so whatever passage you preach about, make sure you're tying it to Jesus. Of course, in his tradition, there is no lectionary, so the preacher chooses his/her own texts. Preaching from a pre-selected cycle of readings, as we do in Catholicism and other denominations, has its advantages and disadvantages.
DeleteAlso - I've been reflecting this year that the people in our parish don't actually get much preaching about the passion, at least the Synoptic accounts. Those accounts are read on Palm Sunday, but we typically don't have preaching on that day; for whatever reason, the tradition in our parish, after the reading of the passion, is to have a few moments of silent reflection. Perhaps that is fine, but as a preacher, it would be nice to highlight some of the incidents and characters, like Dismas the Good Thief. Even Judas's betrayal doesn't get preached in our Catholic church. It just strikes me as a big omission.
I'm tuned into these things as a parent. I went to Catholic schools as a kid, where we had religion class every day, and a school mass once a week (for my parents, I'm told they went to mass every single day). So the schooling reinforced what is preached. I've noticed that there is sort of a "generation gap" in our parish: most of the older people attended Catholic school, but the great majority of younger adults, teens and children did/do not. There is sort of a blithe assumption that "all Catholics know these things" such as the story of Judas's betrayal - but it's not really true.
The ancient practice of the Church of Jerusalem was to read the entire passion-resurrection each Sunday at the Vigil Service. That tradition has been abbreviated in the Byzantine and Orthodox traditions to just the Resurrection Gospel.
DeleteMy liturgy professor Father Taft in his course on the Liturgy Year repeatedly emphasized that the Lord's Day is the original and primordial feast. Easter is a big Lord's Day rather than the Lord's Day being a "little Easter."
In general, the Eastern Churches in their liturgies do a better job of integrating all of salvation history all the time; we in the Roman tradition tend to break it up into bits and pieces. You have to go through the entire liturgical year, maybe even the three- year cycle, to get the big picture.
Sorry, that author is Timothy Keller, not Bill Keller. I called him Evangelical, seems he is Presbyterian, but I think some of those dividing lines are not always sharply drawn.
Deletehttps://timothykeller.com/author
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ReplyDeleteI like the parable because it shows that God is merciful to all, not just the "elect". God loves all, and God does not exclude based on race or creed! (religion)
ReplyDeleteAs all here know, because I repeat it ad nauseam, I don't think God demands that people be baptized christian in order to be welcome in whatever "heaven" there is after death.
The beaten man saved by the Samaritan was not saved by one of the "chosen". So Jesus teaches us that even if we believe that we baptized christians alone can enter "heaven", he might really saying, "Think again."
Jesus tells us what we should do - and it has nothing to do with being a baptized christian. He says to Love, including to love our neighbor. He also says to feed the hungry, visit the sick, clothe the naked, care for the poor, welcome the stranger, and visit the prisoner. Those who love, and who show that love through the generosity of spirit of the Samaritan- and Jesus - are "saved". God loves them and couldn't give a whit about what their official "religion" is, and God might be a bit peeved at the "chosen" folk who didn't stop to help someone in need. In today's form of self-centered christianity that seems mostly focused on saving one's own hide (hmmm,soul) - (I am baptized, I go to church, I tithe, I say all the 'right" prayers in the "right" order at the "right "times so my soul is saved. Halleluja!) This mindset comes across as "I believe all the right things, I am orthodox, so I am saved. That guy over there, the guy acting like the Samaritan, helping the victim of the beating (the one that I and every other "christian" around ignored), isn't an 'orthodox christian", not even a baptized christian. In fact he is a Hindu. He doesn't have a chance. Poor guy"
James Martin at America has another take on this parable - a good one.
Delete"I don't think God demands that people be baptized christian in order to be welcome in whatever "heaven" there is after death.
DeleteThe beaten man saved by the Samaritan was not saved by one of the "chosen". So Jesus teaches us that even if we believe that we baptized christians alone can enter "heaven", he might really saying, "Think again.""
I think you're touching on some complex topics.
I think it's considered a pretty mainstream scholarly opinion that early Christian communities in the Holy Land included both Jews and Samaritans. And the New Testament is replete with evidence that the communities founded by Paul and others included Jews, God-fearers and pagans. So the Jesus movement broke down barriers that formerly had separated people.
But...it also forged a new Christian identity (which quickly became more sharply delineated by persecutions). All of those believers from different backgrounds were initiated into Christian communities via baptism (see the outcome of Peter's Pentecost speech in Acts 2).
You are right that baptism is considered the "typical" or "normative" way to signify belief and initiation. But the problem of good people who are not baptized - who perhaps have never had the Good News proclaimed to them - has perplexed theologians for centuries. And then there are those who are baptized but not fully in communion with one another. And then there are individuals who are baptized but have become estranged from faith communities. There are a number of "use cases" which complicate a simplistic us-vs-them dichotomy. Still, the imperative to proclaim the Good News and bring people to the waters of baptism remains. The name of the game is not to be on the right side of a putative dividing line between sheep and goats; that sounds entirely too much like our grievously divided American society. Rather, it is to get to know God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and rejoice in all the spiritual blessings that come from that holy relationship. Or, if you will, that holy citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. And to bring others - everyone - into that kingdom of peace and justice.
Jim, God is not small. God is not made in man’s imagine. Theologians should stop trying to figure out God - by definition, it’s impossible. They should just open their eyes to the important stuff - God’s love. God made us all, and God provided many paths. You are still hung up on the idea that people can’t be brought into God’s kingdom of love and peace unless someone has baptized them christian. Thank God, literally, that God doesn’t follow the desire of human beings to limit God to only loving the “ chosen”. The parable of sheep and goats tells us that all the manmade stuff - the rituals, the temples, the churches, the mosques, aren’t what is important. What is important is love. The parable couldn’t be more clear. It isn’t undergoing certain rituals, or believing certain things that matters. It’s all about how we love other people. Jesus teaches this over and over again. In the story of the Samaritan, in the parable of sheep and goats, in the direct and simple commands to love. Too many people make it so complicated. Forget theologians, and pay attention to Jesus. And pay attention to God’s creation. Get out of the church buildings and go for a walk, alone, in a breath stopping place of beauty. You will see God there. Listen! Listen to the birds, and the cicadas, and the leaves crunching under your feet, and the water running over the rocks in the stream, and the whisper of the wind through the leaves. And listen to the silence. Because you will begin to hear the spirit whisper in the silence. You will feel God’s gentle touch when the wind brushes your face. You will laugh with God at the antics of the squirrels chasing one another. Don’t worry about the un baptized. Don’t worry about the baptized who, like me, no longer participate in a formal faith community. Too many devoted Christians are immersed in institutional religion that seems to have no faith in God’s goodness, or faith in God’s infinite love.
DeleteI don't see a contradiction between Jim's statement,
ReplyDelete"The name of the game is not to be on the right side of a putative dividing line between sheep and goats; that sounds entirely too much like our grievously divided American society. Rather, it is to get to know God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and rejoice in all the spiritual blessings that come from that holy relationship", and Anne's, "Thank God, literally, that God doesn’t follow the desire of human beings to limit God to only loving the “ chosen”. The parable of sheep and goats tells us that all the manmade stuff - the rituals, the temples, the churches, the mosques, aren’t what is important. What is important is love." You're both saying essentially the same thing, but coming at it from different angles.
Jim likes the God of the institutional Church, and Anne likes the God of Nature, but they're the same.
ReplyDeleteMy sense that God is basically a joyless obligation that constantly expects me to do stuff I don't wanna, specifically the aggravation of going to church--the bad music, shallow and predictable homilies, the "we are always judging you" Church Ladies, etc etc.
But, of course, church-going, living in community, is central to the Christian life. If you can't bear being around God's people for an hour a week, the rest of what you're doing, however nice it makes you feel, is pointless.
Pretty sure that all my nature hikes and cat adoptions are not going to amount to much against my increasing misanthropy and resentments. Having made promises to be Episcopalian and then Catholic and fallen away from them probably makes it all worse. Those sins of omission add up!
God meets us where we are. People dealing with a chronic illness are just taking prudent care when they avoid crowds. Cat rescues are a kind of mercy; Scripture says that God regards the fall of a sparrow. I think he also regards the person who catches the sparrow.
DeleteNot to mention the help and support you give to others through your cancer support group and blog. That may be what you are called to do rather than join the church ladies in whatever they are doing.
DeleteJean, your comments make me sad sometimes. It seems that organized religion has become a serious obstacle between you and God. But you are one who is like the Samaritan - you love. You follow the teachings to love. What you do is NOT pointless - it’s the whole point.
DeleteCommunity is found outside of church walls too. So what if you don’t go to mass with hundreds of strangers, you have another community of strangers to whom you show love. The ritual of mass is very important to some, but God doesn’t care who is in church. God doesn’t have such a fragile ego that s/he is upset unless people “worship” in only one, very limited, way. Your every act of care for the cats or for those with the same illness who are strangers is exactly the kind of love that God asks of us.
Jim likes the God of the institutional Church, and Anne likes the God of Nature, but they're the same
Yes, they are! God is also the same for people who are not baptized christians, who have a different understanding of God. That is where Jim and I differ. I believe that there are as many paths to God as there are people. He believes that everyone must believe exactly the same things about God that christians believe, and that only the Roman Catholic Church knows what those beliefs must be. He believes that everyone in the entire world must be a baptized christian or they will not be able to experience holiness, or experience God’s love, or experience “heaven”. But that is human ego assuming that God is as limited in being able to love people who don’t believe the same things christians believe as most Christian’s are limited - as human beings are limited.
I believe that the easiest way for most people to understand that God is the same God for all is to open our eyes to God’s creation - in nature, in the incredible thing we call the universe (some great images now coming from the Webb telescope). But there are other ways. Organized religion is one, but seems to be incredibly ineffective. Not everyone is able to see God in nature and most who know only organized religion have never even tried. They scoff. They are glued to all the man- made rules and practices that they they think they have to do. Sadly, organized religion seems best at making good, loving people - like you- who follow Jesus commands to love - feel like they are unworthy of God’s love because some human beings told them that because they don’t always follow all the man- made stuff that the nature hikes and cat care “ don’t amount to much”. So, so wrong.
Jesus points out that “ right” belief is not what is important - love is important. People who aren’t baptized christians love others all the time. Many who are baptized christians don’t show love. They are too obsessed with right belief, right ritual, right forms for the community that is praying. They don’t listen to what God is saying, because organized religion usually drowns out God’s voice. They don’t actually have faith in God’s goodness. In God’s love. They want certainty, to KNOW that they are ‘right,”when that’s impossible. They obsess about form. In the RCC the GIRM seems to represent the polar opposite of Jesus’s teachings. But human ego so often gets in the way of seeing Gods love.
Jim's response about Baptism indicates to me that he believes that God and the Spirit are not necessarily bound and circumscribed by our understanding of the Infinite.
DeleteI can't say that "organized religion" is an obstacle for me, only that the specific groups and parishes that I have been involved with were not very inspiring, and were sometimes dominated by gatekeepers rather than proclaimers of the Good News.
However, I think God looks askance when all we do is the easy, comfy thing. That might be following all the rules and using it as a yardstick to smack others with. Or it might be quitting Mass attendance because the people there drive you nuts.
I honestly don't think God cares how hard things get for us, how old, sick, cranky, or poor we are. God never frees us from the obligation to keep struggling to be Christ to others.
God never frees us from the obligation to keep struggling to be Christ to others.
DeleteExactly, Being Christ to others means loving others. Which you do. Being in a building dedicated to religious expression is not necessary to be Christ to others. It probably helps some to remember what they are "supposed" to do, but it's not absolutely needed in order to love others. Jesus never told anyone they had to go to mass. He did tell us - everyone of us- to love one another. I don't recall him spending much time in the temple. He spent most of his time teaching us that we must love. Sometimes explicitly, sometimes through parables (like the sheep and the goats, the Good Samaritan etc) and often through his own treatment of other people. He seemed to have little interest in organized religion, nor for its rules, and didn't show a lot of respect for those who made all the rules for it..
A Hindu might not use the same terminology, - being Christ for others - but would understand that we are to love others. I think that is what God, who or whatever God is, wants. Assuming of course, that God really IS love.
I really don't care if other people need formal church. I am quite willing to understand that they must pursue their own spiritual path. What I object to is that too many of the church-going types are unwilling to accept that others might have a different spiritual path that is just as "good" as the one they have chosen. They are pretty judgmental of the unchurched, insisting that their way is the only way.
Reply
Many good and interesting thoughts on this topic by all.
ReplyDeleteMy own integrating viewpoint is through the lens of Catholic religious life as it has unfolded over the centuries. Although in recent years male religious life has become very clerical, in the early church and also among women religious it has been lay life shaped by baptism.
The solitary religious life has always been prized in Catholicism. Sometimes it was truly solitary, a cave in the wilderness. Sometimes a structure was shared by two or three monks, other times a series of structures along a pathway in the wilderness. While solitaries sought God alone, they did not neglect humanity. They prayed for others, hospitality to the stranger or fellow monk who sought them was very important. However Christian community life in the villages was not essential for them. A few who lived close to a village might come in on a weekend for liturgy and supplies. Priests were discouraged from becoming monks. Many solitaries went for weeks, months, years, and even decades without celebration of the Eucharist. That, however, did not diminish their respect for the Eucharist, or lead them to criticize parish liturgies.
Communal religious life has also been prized in Catholicism. Sometimes communal religious life was seen as the necessary preparation for the higher calling of the solitary life, as in the Rule of Benedict. That rule devoted many pages to the Divine Office but hardly mentions the Mass. Benedict also discouraged priests from becoming monks and made it clear that they had not precedence over lay monks. Everyone was ranked in the order of their day of entry into religious life. A priest could exercise only the roles given to him by the Abbot. God was to be found in prayer, manual work, and communal life.
While many solitaries and monastic communities exercised a life of ministry to others from the beginning (usually in the form of establishing hermitages and communities in page environments), the development of Catholic religious orders dedicated to missionary, educational and social services brought a new emphasis on serving those outside the religious community.
I think our present parochial models of Catholic life are far too influenced by Protestant models of congregationalism. We need to recover the spirituality of solitary life, especially since so many of our laity now live alone. Merton made a good start. In writing Seeds of Contemplation and other works he realized that many lay people are contemplatives either as solitaries or in loose connections with their families.
We have lost our experience of community in our households, families, neighborhoods, and workplaces. Those, rather than our parishes, are places where we should be community builders. I have said often on this blog that I found more community in the mental health system than I did in most (but not all) parishes.
I have found it a very good practice to participate in more than one parish. It is good to let parishes know they have competition. One of those parishes had extremely good liturgies, the other did far better at small groups. When I was deeply involved with a small group in the one parish, I went to their liturgies. However, in the many years when my work life prevailed, I went to the more liturgical parish.
We can find God in solitude, in community, or in service to others.
"page environments" should have been "pagan environments"
DeleteThank you, Jack. It highlights the reality that there are many spiritual paths. Most Catholic parishes emphasize only one path. The more solitary, contemplative paths are seldom mentioned, much less offered, and few Catholics even know about them. This includes the Divine Office. Only a tiny handful of parishes even have Centering Prayer, a sort of beginner guide to contemplation. Few Catholics have even heard about CP, and have no idea what it is.
DeletePS. Thomas Keating, the Cistercian monk who reintroduced christian meditation to the laity through CP, believed that the attraction of eastern religion for christians was due to the loss of christian contemplative practices among the laity. The institution fails to teach it.
DeleteI have to put in a good word for the community of a parish. I have shared before that we had to move around a lot in the earlier years of our marriage, we lived in five different communities, (not so much later, we have been in the same place for the past 27 years.) The Catholic parish was always where we found connection and belonging, not to mention worship and sacraments. We were not yet at a stage in life where contemplative, solitary spirituality was even a possibility. Having young kids doesn't lend itself much to that!
DeleteSt Julian of Norwich, whom I have long admired was an anchorite. She was walled into the church of St Julian, and had a small window through which she could receive Communion and a window on the street through which she could counsel anybody who sought what is now called spiritual direction.
DeleteWe know that her contemplative life was not as solitary as it might seem. She let Margery of Kemp, that noisy medieval had about live with her for a period of time.
It also appears that she had two servants who brought in supplies and cooked for her, and amanuensis with whom she worked to record her visions.
She may have kept a cat, which was allowed under the Anchrene Riwle, rule for anchoresses.
St Cuthbert retired to a hermitage, but was carried out of it, weeping as the story goes, to become bishop of Northumbria by popular acclaim. As a bishop in the Irish tradition, he provided a pattern of pastoral care that I wish more bishops today emulated.
Just two examples of so solitaries who periodically lived in community with others.
had about s/b gadabout
DeleteThe Church today as I have experienced it has distanced itself from the communion of saints, and the great varieties of holy Catholic life are largely forgotten. Now it's get married, have a lot of kids, smack them into shape with your shoe, and make sure everyone knows that's what's "normal."
And parish life seems to be all about getting people to do stuff--wash the altar linens, make coffee, pick up donuts, work the fish fries, march against abortion, decorate for Easter and Xmas, teach CCD, do funeral lunches, make quilts for the raffle fundraisers, clean the rectory, type up the bulletin, serve in the choir or play the organ, etc etc.
Teaching solitary contemplation works against all that.
About doing stuff, I always just picked one, choir and organ. It was something I liked. I don't sign up for stuff I don't like. Well I always say "yes" to bringing food or helping with a funeral luncheon, because my mom impressed on me that it was a work of mercy and death comes to every family, sooner or later.
DeleteI always am happy to donate funeral lunch stuff, and I know that a lot of busy work supports the parish. But busy work seems to be all that's offered to parish women. I am a Martha enough at home. Sometimes I would like to be a Mary.
DeleteKatherine We were not yet at a stage in life where contemplative, solitary spirituality was even a possibility. Having young kids doesn't lend itself much to that!
ReplyDeleteActually, I was first I introduced to it when my sons were 8, 6, and 2. It helped me keep my sanity!
I actually did try centering prayer when the kids were little. Finding space and privacy made it a challenge, at that point it wasn't very successful ( not that success can be measured in such things). An abbreviated form of Liturgy of the Hours worked out better for me.
DeleteI used to get Magnificat when The Boy was little. You can carry it around in your purse. Pretty pricey, though.
DeleteCan. 214 The Christian faithful have the right to worship God according to the prescripts of their own rite approved by the legitimate pastors of the Church and to follow their own form of spiritual life so long as it is consonant with the doctrine of the Church.
ReplyDeleteEach of us has the right to develop our own spirituality using materials from the big tent. Early on I developed a "tool kit" including the Divine Office, Merton's contemplative and solitary tradition, the Jesuit "contemplation in action tradition", and the Benedictine communal tradition. By the time I got to graduate school I had several years of personal exposure to each of these traditions. I have used all of them in various combinations at different times in my life.
Parishes tend to foster spiritualities that are congenial to the pastor and the pastoral staff and existing volunteers. Most of the time they are middle of the road "communal spiritualities" that could draw upon the Benedictine tradition, except none of them draw upon the Divine Office. Like the Benedictine tradition they emphasize education and community, e.g., not sticking out in the crowd.
I'm pretty social. I like being with people, so I guess I'm well-suited to parish life. But I can understand that praying in a group is the way of the cross for some people.
ReplyDeleteI was interested in yr conversation with Jack awhile back about the parish being a relatively newer invention. I wonder if the parish structure encourages certain types of "spiritualities" and quashes others.
DeleteOne of my pet peeves (and I guess I have many!) is the degree to which Catholic churches around here are kept locked during the long stretches when they are deemed "not in use". I do understand the safety considerations and the insurance considerations. But - traditionally, a Catholic church was a place one could slip in to pray quietly and alone when there was no group activity like mass or a wedding going on. And the parishes took care to set up little "stations" that could cater to private and prayer and devotion: statues of Mary or the Sacred Heart, or those racks of votive candles, etc. Even a tabernacle can be a place to engage in some Eucharistic adoration.
DeleteYes. They're all locked up now. Otherwise satanists will steal consecrated Hosts, according to one of the local Church Ladies. Sigh.
Delete