Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - September 20, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
A letter writer in a popular magazine wrote that church attendance was dwindling because the message in church was not relevant. “Ordinary people are primarily concerned about getting home safely and not being mugged on city streets,” he said. People should be told in church not to do such hurtful things. One must have serious doubts that those who do drive-by shootings or mug pedestrians are at Sunday services waiting to be told that these things are wrong.
I think we have to look elsewhere for the causes of crime than lack of preaching about it to churchgoers. And, similarly, dwindling church attendance must have another explanation. What churches and church services are primarily for is worship, prayer, praise, thanksgiving. The church shouldn't quit her mission in favor of moralizing to "the choir" about crime.
Possibly, our hope should lie in getting people to see the relevance of worship and prayer. Someone has put it: “The right relation between prayer and worship, on the one hand, and conduct is not that conduct is supremely important and prayer might help it, but that prayer and worship are supremely important and conduct demonstrates them” (William Temple).
Worship implies that the solution to violence and outrage is not in moralizing but in building women and men imbued with love and respect who in turn build a world of love and respect. We have love and respect for others because we know that we are loved by God. This is at the very least one way of looking at the issue.
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!”
