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Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.
True to the end
What’s the big deal about a little bit of pork? Why was this such an important thing for Eleazar? It doesn’t seem on the surface to be terribly significant. We think about it and we say, well, you know, weighing the two, breaking the law of God in terms of eating pork and saving his life, we might be tempted to say, well, you know, under these circumstances, what was he supposed to do?
But Eleazar is in a situation where his identity, his very identity, is at stake. Does he remain faithful to the religion that he has practiced his entire life? Or does he engage in some pretense in order to save his life, but perhaps risk the faith, as he says, of the young?
One of the most helpful distinctions that I have been given in my life, or that I’ve heard in my life, about, let’s say, the differences in the generations when it comes to religion, is this. I was born just a few months after Pope John XXIII called and announced the council. So in every way, shape, or form, I don’t know any other church, but the church of the Second Vatican Council.
In my generation, and when I think of my life growing up, the value was inclusion. You wanted to make sure that anybody and everybody felt welcome. And things were good. There were so many kids, I remember, that made their first communion in the parish that I grew up in, that we couldn’t even take the picture for the first communion in the sanctuary of the church. There was too many of us.
I remember that there were three masses on a Sunday morning, and the church was full for all of them, because I was an altar server. When we had a youth group, it was filled with high school kids. All of this was true, until it wasn’t.
When I went home to visit my mother, who no longer lives there, but at the time she did, she still lived in the parish where I grew up, they had one child for first communion. Life was different. And so, for many young people in this generation, the value is not so much inclusion as it is identity. I am a Catholic. I believe this. These things are important.
Both values are important. Inclusion and identity. But we do need to recognize the importance of standing for something, of thinking about what those beliefs are that would be too much, and we would be like LEAs are, ready to die. The violations of our law.
Where is the line where we would say, that simply is too much, and I’m going to stand up for my faith in Jesus? Because just as Jesus said to Zacchaeus in today’s Gospel, if we do so, salvation will come to our house too.
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