Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - May 26, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
By now it's a cliché; that knowledge doesn't save, faith and love do. But there is still a place for knowledge in the living of Christian faith today. Though it doesn’t replace prayer and practice, it can help our growth and perspective. A detail mentioned only in passing in Luke 4:38 is an example of the broadening power of some knowledge, especially of Scripture itself and of history.
“On leaving the synagogue, Jesus entered the house of Simon. Simon's mother-in-law was in the grip of a severe fever.” Simon is, of course, the man later called Peter by Jesus. The most prominent of the apostles and their spokesperson, a future martyr in Rome, the man Catholic Christians see as the nearest thing to what we have for some centuries called the pope, this man was married.
For some time in the Catholic church it has been expected that clergy be unmarried, unlike the earliest followers of Jesus. Knowledge of the development of the Christian faith shows us how customs and practices have changed. It gives us a broader perspective on current debates within the church. An African saying goes: “He who never leaves home thinks his mother is the only cook.”
Our time and place or some other favorite century, say the nineteenth, these are, obviously, not the final standards for what can and cannot be in Christian practice. More knowledge can help us develop well-based convictions and preserve us from thinking that today's model is the only one. Christ is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow but much else can change.
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
