13th Sunday in Greentime
4th Sunday after Pentecost
Don’t You Care? (Part Two)
We continue to reflect upon the disciples’ frightened question to Jesus last weekend during the storm at sea. Jesus will show how much He cares about us disciples (then and now) by extending His arms on the cross to show us the depths of the Trinity’s Love for each of us. Jesus can legitimately ask us the same question in reverse. Don’t you care?
In a popular book that many have read, The Kiteflyer, one character says that the most important commandment of all is the Seventh Commandment, “Thou shall not steal”. Most major world religions agree on the Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
A legitimate corollary of that idea is that we should do unto God as we would have God do unto us. God has shown us in Christ Jesus how much God cares. What is Golden Rule’s response to that?
From the first century of the Jesus Movement, the first day of the week has been the Christian Sabbath. Christians pause and remember that God in Christ does care for us by resting, relaxing and rejoicing in a Sabbath’s rest, in gratitude to God.
What a different world we have become! Someone recently coined the expression “Counterfeit Sabbath”. Now, we merely substitute a frenetic, non-stop, addictive Sunday schedule for the usual frenetic, non-stop, addictive schedule that possesses us the other six days a week.
In the process in many cases, God gets relegated to one hour a week in most places. (In
So important for us to keep in mind that values are caught, not taught. This is true for every venue in which we dwell. We rub off on each other; we vibrate off each other; we live in one another’s force fields. There are reciprocal relationships between individuals, families, communities. Relationships are the basis of reality.
Our relationship with God is the basis of all relationships. Remember what Jesus said in St Matthew’s Gospel, “Wherever 2 or more gather together in My Name, I am present in their midst.”
For years, Catholics have spoken of the symbiotic (mutually life-giving) relationship that should exist between the domestic church (your household) and our paroikia (your other household at the local domus ecclesiae (church edifice). Hopefully, your household church feels at home in your other home as you do at home.
Still, as we remember that values are caught, not taught, what might a parish community think of the fact that a mere 9 of 65 children (confirmed the previous weekend!!) attended Mass the following weekend? What might a parish community think when Sunday Mass attendance drops off so drastically in the summer months? (Not everyone is on vacation every weekend.) What might a parish community think when a Mass half-emptied on Corpus Christi to avoid a 5 minute procession and Benediction that was part of at tradition that goes back 700 years and speaks to our hope that Jesus is always with us in our journey through life each week? (One would hope at least they were not tearing down to the US Open in
It is one thing to wonder what a parish community is to think. What does God think? All opportunities for Jesus to assure us that He does, indeed, care for us as we gather as His Body to share His Word and His Eucharist are lost. Jesus might legitimately ask of us the very same question we ask of Him, “Don’t you care?” Think of the children in all this. Values are caught, not taught!! God comes first, even on a summer Sunday! What do children think? 070206AD jfq
