Cult
with Conversion
In
an ancient civilization a caveman discovered fire. He invented a simple
instrument for making fire and learned cooking and melting and other
uses for it. As he began to share his new discovery with other cavemen
the priests got to hear about it. Being afraid that with this new
power they would lose some of their hold over the people, they had
the fire-inventing-cave-man murdered. But then they were afraid that
the people might rise up against them so they ha a big picture of
the inventor painted and a big shrine made. There in the shrine they
put the picture and the instruments for making fire. Through this
cult they killed fire and it was several thousand years before it
was discovered again.
In
today's Gospel story we read of the owner of the vineyard who sends
out his servants to collect from his tenants. But the tenants beat
one, killed another and stoned a third. After this pattern was repeated
the landowner decided to send his own son, thinking, "They will
respect my son." But they dragged him outside the vineyard and
killed him. The allegory is clear. The owner is God and the tenants
are the people of Israel, the Jews. The servants are the Prophets
and the various messengers and were sent to convert Israel. The Son
is Jesus who was taken outside the city of Jerusalem and killed. The
vineyard was then given to other tenants, the Gentiles or non Jews.
The
Savior is still being taken outside the city and being killed today
and one of the ways that this happens is through cult and ritual.
Cult and ritual play a very important part in our lives: 1) Cult and
ritual help us to express the inexpressible. Almost every people known
to anthropologists have used ritual to express their awareness of
and their effort to relate to transcendence - the something or someone
beyond. 2) Rituals underline that something is beyond the ordinary
and needs to have some fuss made about it. Examples would be; the
installation of a president; graduation at the end of studies; entrance
into the Christian community at Baptism. 3) Ritual gives us something
appropriate and relieving to do in times of stress. This is the value
of the funeral ritual. 4) Ritual signals transition. Having done the
appropriate thing we can now move on to the next stage.
While
rituals can be very helpful in dealing with difficult or intangible
parts of reality they can also be destructive. They can become an
escape from facing or coping with reality. Rituals can become an escape
from conversion to the Lord and to act according to God's plan. This
phenomenon has been condemned in the Old and in the New Testament.
The Prophets of the Old Testament ranted against those who offered
sacrifice and failed to care for the widow and the orphan. In the
judgment scene, in Matthew 25, answering the cry of the needy, and
not worship or sacrifice, are the criteria for admission into heavenly
glory. We can very easily use symbols, cult, or rituals to put God
on a pedestal - up there, out of our way. Through reverence we can
take him out of the city and kill him. It can often be done by a sincere
reverence.
A
few years ago I began having Sunday Mass in the poorest area of the
parish so as to make it easy for the poor to come. However, it is
not the poor but the middle class of the area who come to the Mass.
The poor do not come because they have no special clothes into which
to change. The practice of changing to go to church - which is good
in itself as it is a sign of great reverence for God - became a reason
for not coming al all! This kind of reverence has put people outside
the walls of worship.
It
has been traditional for communities in the Philippines to have barrio
(village) chapels. They are a symbol of God at the center of the community
uniting all. But do they? Sometimes they multiply because different
groups cannot agree or want to be independent. It has been said that
the existence of many church buildings is a sign that people believe
in God but it may also be a sign that they do not love their neighbors
and therefore a sign that they do not love God.
This
issue is becoming very obvious in the contemporary Philippine scene.
The preferred way of being Church today is according to the Basic
Ecclesial Community model. This has been especially endorsed by the
1991 Second Plenary Council of the Philippines. The important shift
that this indicates is that God is no longer sought only in the institution
but now is primarily sought amongst the people in the small local
communities. This shift in theology brings up the practical question
then: Would it be more practical and even more religious to have a
multipurpose community center where religious services can also take
place rather than just have a barrio chapel, which is often a shelter
for pigs and goats in the time between the celebrations of feasts?
In this way the secular is made sacred, and the presence of God in
all activities of the community is acknowledged.
I
think it is true to say that through reverence and ritual we have
conveniently taken Christ outside the secular city to crucify him.
Today we are called to acknowledge his presence in all things and
in all places. This development must begin with our personal prayer
lives. As the Constitution on the Sacred liturgy of Vatican II said:
"The spiritual life is not limited solely to participation in
the liturgy. The Christian is indeed called to pray with others, but
he must also enter into his bedroom and pray to his Father in secret;
furthermore according to the apostle, he must pray without ceasing
(#12)." It is from being present in prayer at our own centers
that we learn to be present in liturgy and worship.
Recently
I was instructing an adult who wished to be baptized a Catholic. She
had been attending Mass for sometime and I asked her how she felt
about the experience. "It is very good when I feel that the priest
is in it," she said, "but I often feel that he is not there."
Christian meditation is a way of prayer that will bring us "to
being there" when we are with the community listening to the
scriptures, in hearing them as they struggle to meet the problems
of their lives, and in worship. These will become ways of meeting
Christ and being converted by him rather than being ways of taking
him outside the walls and crucifying him.
Taken
from Sundays
into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian
Publications
