The Pastor's Pen

 

February 13, 2022, Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

SYNOD DIALOGUE SESSION: All parishioners are invited to participate in the dialogue session to be held following the 10:30 AM Mass on Sunday, February 27th, in the Parish Hall. The session is part of the preparation for the World-Wide Synod of Bishops to be held in Rome in 2023 and the means for all members of the church to participate in the synod. Please mark your calendars and plan to attend; questions to be contemplated and answered prior to the session are available at the entrances to the church

THEN AND NOW: In these weeks of Ordinary Time which precede the coming of the Season of Lent , we follow the Galilean Ministry of Jesus in the Gospels proclaimed at Mass. Yet in order to understand these accounts better, we must also appreciate the cultural influences which created the climate in which Jesus appeared and preached to realize how his message announcing the Kingdom of God presented a challenge to many of his hearers. The dominant culture at the time of Jesus was Hellenism, a Roman rebranding of Greek notions of the good life, adapted so as to assist the Roman Emperors to maintain control over an ever-expanding realm encompassing the whole of the Mediterranean world The ten cities of the Decapolis created by the Romans in Northern Israel and mentioned in the Gospels give us an idea of what was understood to be of importance; keeping people well-fed and entertained so as to prevent them from grumbling or rebelling against Roman rule. So, the plan of every city constructed by the Romans would include bathhouses, casinos, theatres, brothels, markets, and taverns to keep the residents and the visitors of the city quite busy. Indeed, satiation of appetites and distraction through entertainment were the opiates of the people, and the formula was by and large successful for a time. While history books may credit the barbarians for the eventual fall of the Roman Empire in the west, the rise of Christianity should not be ruled out as also being an important influence. When Constantine permitted the free exercise of religion in the Empire, and Christianity emerged from the shadows and began to spread more widely in the early 4th Century, theatres, bathhouses, casinos, and brothels began to lose customers! Our earlier ancestors in the faith were appropriately known for their morality and they had little tolerance for the cultural distractions and vices that had flourished during the three first centuries since their founding. Obviously, this was true of bathhouses and brothels but also most especially of the circuses in which Christians and other unfortunates were made to face half-starved wild animals in order to entertain violence-loving, blood-thirsty crowds. Yet in our own day, we see a return to the culture of distraction, but now you don’t have to go out to the city because much that captivated the attention of the people throughout the Roman Empire is now available not only at home but right on one’s own hand-held device! We see the distracted everywhere, but truly they are somewhere else as they attend to what is on their phone or iPad while paying little or no attention to the very people right next to them. In light of this now present-day Hellenistic cultural trend, we might each want to examine our own use of these devices and assess the quantity and quality of our screen time each day. Are we being intellectually stimulated, spiritually enriched, or uplifted and inspired by what we do “online” , or are we simply being distracted or perhaps worse? Disciples of Jesus Christ should be very attentive to the things of God each day, so as we begin now to plan what we will do in the upcoming season of Lent, perhaps our fasting might be more than from food, but from anything that distracts us from the Kingdom that Jesus came to preach and inaugurate, beginning with many of things we might find on a screen!

 

A PARISH MISSION: Fr. Vincent Fortunato, a Capuchin Franciscan, will be here at Christ the King Parish to present a Mission the theme of which is LENT: A NEW SPRINGTIME. The Mission will begin as Fr. Vinny preaches at all the Masses on the weekend of March 12th and 13th, and then gives a presentation on the evenings of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, March 14th,15th, 16th at 7 PM. Fr. Vinny’s visit here has been in the works and on hold now for two years due to the pandemic, but as more and more people are vaccinated and boosted and accustomed to taking reasonable precautions when gathered with numerous people in an indoor setting, the time has come to go forward with this important opportunity for a spiritual reboot in the season of Lent. While in-person attendance is strongly encouraged, the mission sessions will also be available via Livestream each evening so that as many as are interested in the renewal that a Mission offers may be able to participate in it. So please mark your calendars now and set aside the time to participate!