I know you’ve had a busy summer especially with your recent trip to Brazil for World Youth Day. Your joyful and humble ways have been an inspiration to all.
My wife and I have had an eventful summer here in Canada with the birth of our fourth grandchild and a family wedding in August.
With frequent visits to Ottawa, Hamilton and beyond, we’ve been sitting in unfamiliar pews over the past two months. Though the consistency of the liturgies in Catholic churches is reassuring, the similarity in the homilies at the churches we’ve visited over the past two months has been somewhat disconcerting.
The common theme of these sermons has been to stay alert and be faithful to God in all things as we await the kingdom of heaven. Certainly important reminders however the message is often subverted by well meaning priests and deacons.
One priest explained that because heaven’s gates are so narrow, most, if not all of us, will have we wait in purgatory for a while before we are welcomed to our heavenly home.
And here I thought eternity was a state of being without swinging doors and timekeepers.
Another priest claimed that the carrot of heaven is an inducement for us to do the right thing in difficult circumstances.
That only reminded me of a child having to eat his vegetables so he could have some dessert.
Still another tried to clarify the difference between our own final judgment and the last judgment, a time, he claimed, when we’d get to hear the transgressions of all our neighbours, a public shaming of sorts. Yikes!
Unless congregants are in their nineties, it seems to me that preaching about making it to heaven is a futile message these days for people who have abandoned the concept of delay of gratification in favour of an instant win mentality.
Certainly, in some deprived cultures, the idea of a transcendent reward may still be meaningful but in North America, where rewards are usually found in a loaded refrigerator, that message seems antiquated.
The idea of running a marathon while keeping one’s eyes on the finish line just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Besides, how many people really want to leave their families and friends behind in favour of a unseen destination?
Your Holiness, though I do trust in your leadership and acumen, may I humbly ask that you consider updating the Catholic message from concern about saving one’s soul at some future date to the task of saving a neighbor in need today, from talk about mystery to talk about mission.
May God continue to richly bless you.
Mike 2.0
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