Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/050112.cfm

There were some Cypriots and Cyrenians among them, however, who came to Antioch and began to speak to the Greeks as well, proclaiming the Lord Jesus.

Even in the earliest days of the New Testament some Christians complained about the changes in the church. They did not want to worship the Jewish messiah with “Greeks.” The only compromise they would accept was permitting the foreigners to become Jews by circumcision before they were baptized. They regarded Saint Paul as a liberal who would let anyone into the church; Saint James, as a conservative; and Saint Peter, as a flip-flopper. 

There are still many Christians and Catholics who would ban certain ethnic or racial groups from membership in their church. In American churches they oppose the use of Spanish language hymns. “Let them learn English!” they say, although many of their ancestors built their own German-, Italian- or Polish-language churches when they came from Europe. While the Mass was celebrated in Latin, which they neither heard nor understood, they prayed their rosaries, Stations and other devotions in their native languages.

But a church restricted by language barriers or ethnic membership cannot call itself Christian. It is only a cult. And that cult is doomed to die a slow painful death as its members pass away one by one, each one complaining as she goes that the church has abandoned the old ways. A Christian cult fails in its mission to announce the good news of Jesus. While it comforts its membership as all religions do, Christian or pagan; it doesn’t “make disciples of all nations.”

Of course I can feel some sympathy with those people. The older I get the more unfamiliar the world seems to me. Where, at one time, I was eager to learn, understand and adapt, I now prefer not to know. Someone asked if I think women should be ordained. “Certainly,” I said, “but not while I’m alive.” While I agree with the principle, I don’t want to answer the hysterical questions of bewildered Catholics who thought the church would never change. Just the other day I met a fellow who proudly refuses to say “Holy Spirit!” He thinks Holy Ghost means the same thing. (But if it means the same thing why not say “Holy Spirit” along with the rest of us?)

In effect he says to the Church, “Wait till I’m dead before you change anything else!” But that’s absurd. We must pray the Lord will give each one the open, gracious spirit of Saint Paul, a pharisaic Jew, who welcomed Jesus Christ and everyone who believed in him, regardless of language, ethnicity, gender, or nationality.