Homily for the 20^th Sunday of the Year—Cycle A

A few weeks ago I was at a conference at Saint John’s Abbey in Minnesota, for which one of their monks was reviving a group that had fallen into desuetude because of the illness of its leader.  This group, with a new board of directors, is the North American Commission for Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, which often goes by its acronym MID. I am well aware that many people might look at this particular enterprise as something that might appeal to certain people, like myself, but that its work really doesn’t make a lot of difference to the Church or the world at large.  However, while there I heard of an incident at a parish in Minneapolis that helped me realize why the work of MID really is important. 

We were told that at this parish a group of students who were learning about other religions had visited a Buddhist community in that city, had practiced meditation in that community’s temple, and had photos of their visit posted on Facebook.  That led to a couple hundred replies by older members of their parish, overwhelmingly negative replies, claiming among other things that these students were being misled into some sort of demonic world.  To their credit, the students themselves replied to that criticism by posting their reflections online, assuring their critics that they remained faithful to their Catholic faith, and did not feel at all threatened by their time of meditation at that temple.

What most struck me by what might seem only an intra-parish difference of opinion is that this phenomenon was surely not limited to that one parish.  The critics, whether there or elsewhere, seem to have been badly informed about the Church’s teaching today, or at least are unwilling to accept it.  There is no doubt but that the Second Vatican Council did encourage a new way of looking at other religious traditions. 

When I was a child, it was standard teaching that Catholics ought not in any way participate in the service of other Christian churches.  If you were invited, for example, to the wedding of a friend in a Protestant church, you were supposed simply to sit in the back of the church, taking no part in the service itself but just waiting until it was over so you could congratulate your friend at the reception that followed.  If that was the attitude toward another Christian church, you can well imagine—or perhaps recall—that Catholic practice was even more stringent with regard to other religions.  If you learned about them at all, it was primarily to become able to refute their errors.

Many persons naturally grew up and retained that attitude, whether it was based mainly on what could be called “fear of the other,” or some kind of innate nativism, or still some other factor.  It is just a fact that Vatican II’s decree Nostra ætate, on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions did mark a major change in the way we are called to regard those of other faiths.  For the first time ever at that highest level, the Church had good things to say about these others.  The decree actually names some of these other traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, and even more generally says in these very words:  "The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all people." 

Such a statement is well worded.  It clearly states that there remain important differences in “precepts and doctrines,” but that certainly does not mean we cannot learn from and in some ways incorporate into our own lives some of these other practices, including ways of meditation.  While at the conference at which I had learned of this controversy at a Minneapolis parish, I also met six Buddhist monks, most of them from the early Theravada tradition, and was struck by how peaceful, joyful, and friendly they were.  One of them gave each of us a copy of a book he had written,[1] based on his own experience and expressing his conviction that the regular practice of meditation leads us to “be present with our emotions without becoming entangled in them.” We learn, he wrote, “to distinguish between what we can control and what we cannot,” and thereby find this distinction transformative, for “letting go of the need to control the uncontrollable frees us from unnecessary stress.”  That distinction is certainly part of the wisdom of religious traditions throughout the world and normally takes root only through the regular practice of meditation, of which there are many kinds.

A bit later in the same book, he writes:  “Each moment, whether serene or turbulent, offers an opportunity to return to the present and rest in the understanding that all things, including both comfort and discomfort, shall pass.”  For all I know, that monk never read anything by Saint Teresa of Avila, but experientially their teaching is the same, even though Bhante Sathi is writing from a non-theistic tradition and Saint Teresa was convinced of God’s abiding care when she wrote in her so-called bookmark:

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing;
God only is changeless.
Patience gains all things.
Whoever has God wants nothing.
God alone suffices.

Hearing that, a person might well conclude that Saint Teresa, and the entire tradition of which she is an outstanding example, could be sufficient.  I agree.  There is no absolute need for a person to become familiar with another tradition, but the truly important thing is never to demonize them or consider them useless.  Our readings from this Mass really teach much the same.  The Gospel includes what I believe is the only time in any Gospel when Jesus is bettered in an argument.  This was when a pagan woman, living in the coastal city of Tyre north of Israel, comes to Jesus begging help for her daughter. You will recall that Jesus at first refuses, even referring to that woman and all of her pagan associates as “dogs,” an Israelite term of great disrespect, similar to calling someone a pig or swine.  The woman, however, stands her ground, continues to beseech the Lord’s help, and finally elicits from him the statement:  “O woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.”  And the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour.

This account is just one illustration of the much more general teaching that we heard in our first reading, from the prophet Isaiah, which refers to all foreigners, which in fact means pagans, persons outside the chosen people of Israel.  But rather than castigate these others, the prophet says:  “The foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, ministering to him, loving the name of the Lord, and becoming his servants . . . them I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer . . . for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

Yes, “for al peoples.”  May we recognize the goodness that is to be found outside the boundaries of our own Church and do whatever we can to promote understanding and peace among all of us.