Memorial of Saint Paul Miki and Companions, Martyrs
This Easter, my husband (Bill) and I will celebrate our second anniversary as Catholics. As we awaken again at the Easter vigil to the truth of the resurrected Christ, we will also remember so vividly the first time we received the Eucharist.
Bill and I became Catholic for a number of reasons. A big one had to do with the fact that we yearned to be a part of a church that leans on the millennia of years of thinking and practice. As Christians who had been in churches that loved to invent new ways of worshiping God (which too often left us scratching our heads), we wanted to learn the ways of a church that had a long tradition of worship (along with a whole lot of people who could explain it to us!).
Nearly two years from our first experience of the mass, we are only more grateful for that tradition. Just for instance, we now know the phrases of the mass. We can speak together, with all those gathered, the words of the mass that were once completely foreign to us. The one that I can barely get through because of the emotion it inevitably brings is this: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” But it isn’t just the speaking. It’s the kneeling. It’s the holding of hands as we pray the “Our Father”. It’s the passing of the peace. It’s the crossing of ourselves and, oddly enough for us former Protestants, it’s the genuflecting. It is the full-bodied tradition of worship that grips us every mass.
Jesus is right, of course, in the text from Mark that tradition has its limits. It can become an idol as easily as a golden calf. And in a lot of places, in a lot of churches, tradition is what matters. Tradition, and all the problems of the past that it drags along with it, are what is worshiped.
But it need not be that way. Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the law but to uphold it. Isn’t that the point? How do we as Catholics uphold the law? We do it with Jesus. The one who upholds it and utterly remakes it.
We are remade every time we receive the Eucharist. We take Jesus into ourselves, and we are remade. We become his vessels. We go forth to embody his Good News. If ever there was a tradition that was worth living for, that surely is it.
- Sue Trollinger