Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Title

Renewal not Rebuilding

Outline

Israel was looking for rebuilding

Rebuilding the city wall; rebuilding the agricultural economy; rebuilding their dominance over the nations that were a threat to them; and, not mentioned in the text, rebuilding the Temple (of course, Amos was speaking to Israel, the northern kingdom) and the restoration of worship the way it was done in the “old days.”

Jesus is offering renewal

The question is about fasting, the Monday and Thursday fasts of the Jews with respect to the Temple. Was Jesus really loyal to the Mosaic system.

Jesus says that his presence established a time of renewal. It was not in discontinuity with the old but it was the hopes of the old come to fruition in him in person.

He also notes that the “bridegroom” will be “taken away from them” and in his experienced absence they will indeed fast - same action but for a different reason.

Then we get two proverbs summing it up

You cannot take the old forms of Judaism and simply place a kingdom content in them. They are good; one wants to preserve them to the extent possible, but you want to put the new cloth into a new garment and patch the old with a piece of well-worn cloth, you want to use old wineskins for water or wine that is already fully fermented, for storage, and put new wine into new skins.

Christianity is in continuity with Israel, a continuation of the people of God, but the Temple is now a person and a body of people, the worship is now non-bloody and sacramental, the hope is for a new earth and a heavenly city, a true community, not rebuilding the old city on the same patch of earth.

This is something to pray about

Christianity now has a long history and has gone through many stages and ages, often different in different parts of the world.

We can get to longing for the heyday of Christendom or our Order, forgetting the context in which those things developed and were needed. While there will be more continuity in that the Church age is one age, there will be different segments in which differences will be appropriate if we are to be held by the same Spirit.

Mother Theresa could not simply copy Dominicans or Franciscans although many of her practices were similar. The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal could not duplicate St Francis; in fact St Anthony of Padua could not duplicate the St Francis nor could St Bonaventure. The post-Tridentine mass does not fit comfortably into a world in which few educated people versus all educated people know Latin. Yet the Ordinariate has shown how continue its best forms in an English mass while drawing from still older traditions.

Our call is not to preserve the past as in a museum, but ask where Christ is leading us to express our charism in this age of the world. It will preserve the old, but it will also look very different. A school led by St Elizabeth Anne Seton and one led by or influenced by modern Dominicans will instill the same faith through different actions. We always look for where Christ is going ahead of us.