22nd Sunday A Means to an End

A Zen tale. Once when a spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening meditation, the cat who lived in the monastery made such noise that it distracted them. So the teacher ordered that the cat be tied up during the evening practice.  Years later, when the teacher died, the cat continued to be tied up during the meditation session. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the monastery and tied up. Centuries later, learned descendants of the spiritual teacher wrote scholarly treatises about the religious significance of tying up a cat for meditation practice.

What customs, habits, practices, rituals do any of us have in our homes, in our lives; ones that maybe we have gotten so familiar with we have forgotten the why we do it, we just simply do it? Sometimes these become part of our coping mechanism.  Watching Rafael Nadal serve can be maddening; he has this long involved pattern before he will serve. But, also that helps him to focus, and let’s face it, it works. We hear of others who must wear a particular pair of socks or other clothing for luck.  I know that my little morning ritual of waking up, starting coffee, feeding the cat, taking supplements, eating breakfast… helps me to get ready. Any disruption messes me up.

These practices, these rituals, these habits are generally a means to an end.  It is good for us time and again to kind of stop and reassess our lives and our actions. What are we doing and why? Have the means to the end become more important than the end itself?

Families are very busy, it seems, with lots of activities, especially families with kids. Sports, school, dance, socials, then throw in work, other play, going to church on the weekend every weekend, religious education and formation.... All good right? But to what end? What lies at the core of the family and does all this activity distract from the most important thing, the bond of the husband and wife? From being truly a family?

Life is about living it to the full; Jesus tells us that. Life in the full is about loving God, loving others and letting ourselves be loved. This is it. That core notion of God, the love of God and God’s love for us is our end. That divine love inspires us to share that love with others, our spouses, children, parents, siblings, extended family, friends, strangers, the community.

Everything we do becomes the means to this end; to grow in love of God, and thus find the way to to live life in full.  And we can lose sight of this, become distracted, and place all our efforts into the tying up of cats.  All the readings focus on this, in some way or another.

The Israelites are given the covenant, given to them by God to keep the people centered in on God; thus be stronger and an inspiration to the other nations. Moses warns them, don’t add anything, don’t take away anything, keep that focus.

James, of the 2nd Reading, that phrase…”Religion that is pure...is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and keep unstained by the world”. This sense of care for others, and keeping ourselves attached to the good virtues, not the worldly views.

Jesus clearly had the love of the Father in his heart, mind and soul. This formed the core by which he did all that he did; the healing, the forgiving, the welcoming, the preaching. It clearly led him to the Cross and Death, and to the Resurrection. It saw the importance of the rituals, but he never let the rituals dictate the love he had. Nor did he ever let the rituals dictate how much God’s love us.

He inspired a community to continue this work. A community that grew in love, struggled with it, yet here we are some 2000 years later.

Our rituals and our artwork as Catholics serve the purpose of raising our minds to the transcendent, to God. They are the means by which our minds and hearts and our senses are engaged to contemplate how Christ calls us to a deeper understanding of God and to be more free. They serve to draw us into the love of God. Not earn it, but be drawn deeper into it. We also have faced that challenge of those rituals, those “means” getting too much focus and we forget God. We focus on our human derived traditions, equating them with God.

How many times the question of “Bells” gets raised. Those bells during mass served a function: when the mass was in Latin and the priest was turned away from the people mumbling in bad Latin without a microphone, the people sat in pews and were praying on their own. The beds announced the special moments and called people to look up, pay attention. Nothing more.  Now that we all give our undivided attention during the mass to the prayers and listen to them in a language we understand, and contemplate the meaning of those prayers, no longer do we need the bells.

Often people talk with me about how stale or dry their prayer life has become. They have been doing the same thing over and over and over since the days of Moses on the mountain, because they assumed that is exactly what was deigned by God. If the prayers and rituals no longer deepen our comprehension of God, then time to change. God never said we had to pray a rosary every day. God asks for that daily communication.

Same applies to life in general...life seem boring, stale, dry we are not engaged? Family life too routine and the person we share a house with seems more a stranger than a spouse?  Maybe time to re-center on the love.

Jesus reveals this path. He calls us to this way. Love of God through love of others. So we gather here each week to re-center ourselves on this way, on love. We come each week knowing that we have probably in some way or form not loved as much as we can, nor accepted love as much as we can. We come knowing that we have gotten distracted by life.  Notice that in each mass we all start off with acknowledging this and remembering that now matter what, God loves us and will forgive...then we move forward.

Each week we come as households, in the myriad of forms that they take, and re-bond. Spouses, children, friends, partners….  Because nothing needs to distract us from that love.