The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" and the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" ....But God has combined the members of the body ... so that there should be no division in the body, but its parts should have equal concern for each other...Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it....If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body (I Cor. 12:14ff).
***************************************************************************
In The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis devotes a special section of his encyclical to "The Evangelizing Power of Popular Piety." While he does not mention St. Joseph's Altars specifically in the section, my friend's blog so perfectly describes one of the areas of "popular piety" that embodies what Pope Francis puts into words in his letter:
Once the Gospel has been inculturated in a people, in their process of transmitting their culture, they also transmit the faith in ever new forms...Each portion of the people of God [i.e., the "hand" and the "eye" of the Body of Christ] by translating the gift of God into its own life and in accordance with its own genius, bears witness to the faith it has received and enriches it with new and eloquent expressions...Herein lies the importance of popular piety, a true expression of the spontaneous missionary activity of the people of God. This is an ongoing and developing process, of which the Holy Spirit is the principal agent. Popular piety enables us to see how the faith, once received, becomes embodied in a culture and is constantly passed on....Popular piety "manifests a thirst for God which only the poor and the simple can know...it makes people capable of generosity and sacrifice even to the point of heroism, when it is a question of bearing witness to belief. Closer to our own time, Benedict XVI, speaking about Latin America, pointed out that popular piety is a "precious treasure of the Catholic Church," in which we see "the soul of the Latin American peoples.: the Aparecida Document describes the riches which the Holy Spirit pours forth in popular piety by his gratuitous initiative. On that beloved continent, where many Christians express their faith through popular piety, the bishops refer to it as "the peoples mysticism." It is truly "a spirituality incarnated the culture of the lowly." ...it is a legitimate way of living the faith, a way of feeling part of the Church and a manner of being missionaries....Journeying together to shrines and taking part in other manifestations of popular piety, also by taking one's children or inviting others, is in itself an evangelizing gesture.
There is much more to Pope Francis' letter, which I would love to continue quoting here, but what my friend wrote in her blog about participating in a communal effort to express the faith of an elderly woman who years ago had made a promise to St. Joseph so perfectly embodies the sentiments of Pope Francis! He is trying to get the church as a whole to say what Paul wrote to the Corinthians: "the hand cannot say to the eye, "I have no need of you...."
Some years ago, at a social gathering, a friend casually mentioned that she had observed that, in general, people tend to fall into one of two categories. She said that when meeting new people, she could usually tell whether they were "cats" or "dogs." The "dog" people fell all over themselves trying to love other people and gathering the affection of others in return. "Cat" people, however, tended to be laid back, observing and thinking, allowing others to decide whether they wanted to "pet the cat" or not. "Cat" people were affectionate in their own way, but did not immediately jump up and put their paws on other people's chests, with their tongues hanging out, saying "I love you; pet me, please." Now that I live with 3 cats, I have noticed a tender and undying affection in all of them, expressed in different ways. All of them want to be in the same room where I am, and sometimes on my lap, but often just curled up beside me, or at my feet, peacefully napping. There is much relaxation about being around a cat, just as there is much joy in being around a loving dog. And I have noticed that it is not true that dogs and cats don't get along. Rather, I think what is true from the perspective of both species is expressed in the words of Henry Higgins: "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" (Why can't a cat be more like a dog? -- and vice-versa).
Pope Francis is obviously aiming to get the church to appreciate both the cats and the dogs in the body of Christ, but of course he is much more eloquent in his words than I am! And he opens our eyes to the faith of those who "express that content more by way of symbols than by discursive reasoning.....to understand this reality, we need to approach it with the gaze of the Good Shepherd, who seeks not to judge but to love....I think of the steadfast faith of those mothers tending their sick children who, though perhaps barely familiar with the articles of the creed, cling to a rosary; or of all the hope poured into a candle lighted in a humble home with a prayer for help from Mary, or in the gaze of tender love directed to Christ crucified....they are the manifestation of a theological life nourished by the working of the Holy Spirit who has been poured into our hearts (cf. Rom. 5:5).
No comments:
Post a Comment