Two years ago, I sat in the congregation at The Oratory Church of St. Boniface in Brooklyn, broken and hurting still from leaving my previous church. The homily that day (click on the March 28 recording) helped me start to heal. Sitting in the choir loft of that same church this Palm Sunday, now a part of this community in ways I wouldn't have imagined two years ago, I was filled with gratitude that added to my appreciation of this celebration. For all the things that drive me crazy about the Church and what people assume Catholics do and believe, the priests and the community at Oratory are a huge part of the balance that keeps me coming back. We are the Church, the people. The Church is imperfect because we are imperfect, and yet we keep striving to be worthy of God's love, sometimes forgetting that He loves us despite our imperfection. I love that we as Church keep trying to be better. I found such a great example of that in the back of our program for Mass this Palm Sunday, in a letter from the Ecumenical and Inter-faith Commission for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, which I'm excerpting here:
The readings for this sacred time, while spiritually inspiring, present us with an important homiletic task. In the past these readings were often chosen to legitimatize anti-Semitic rhetoric and behavior on behalf of some Christinas which caused suffering for the jewish Community and betrayed the emaning of the mission of Christ.
This was followed by this quote from Nostra Aetate rejecting anti-Semitism and persecution:
True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ;(13) still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.
Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.
So much food for thought. Walking home from Mass, with Brooklyn in full bloom, I begin this Holy Week actually a little sad that Lent is coming to a close, but looking forward to another week of reflection, and music.
