As was the case for many parents, this week we sent our kids back to school. It's interesting to find this ritual to be both so exciting and full of newness, and yet also same ol' same ol'. We have this back-to-school season each year - yet each year also brings new teachers, new schools, new supplies, new people. 

 

It's interesting that back-to-school week in the Dayton area happened in the same week as today's memorial feast about the queenship of Mary. When Pius XII declared this day a feast in honor of Mary's queenship, he wrote that "the Most Blessed Virgin is queen not only because she is Mother of God, but also because, as the new Eve, she was associated with the new Adam." The old Adam and Eve were heralds of death and sin. The New Adam, who is Jesus Christ, and the New Eve, herald new life, resurrection and an entirely new age. 

 

The new world has come! But just as back-to-school week heralds new things but is also an "old" experience, the old world also remains with us, intermixed with the new. We experience the tension between God's grace in our lives each day, and the sin and death that threaten to make us forget God's grace.

 

Today's scriptures focus on this new-old tension. Today's first reading (Ezekiel 37:1-14) is the famous passage about old bones. "Can these bones live?" Ezekiel starkly asks as he peers at the very dry, very old, dead bones he sees. Through God's grace, the old dead bones do, indeed, become new again, though. Yes - these bones live!  

 

In today's gospel (Matthew 22:34-40), we see Jesus stating the Great Commandment to love God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself. Sometimes Christians think these commandments are unique to Christians, but in fact they are "old". Jesus quotes them from the Old Testament where God proclaims all the commandments. But Jesus calls us to love God and neighbor in new ways.

 

Today, let us examine and celebrate all the ways in which God is working new things in us, even as we continue to live what looks like an "old" life.

 

- Jana M. Bennett