Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter

Lectionary: 279

I observed and saw the four-legged animals of the earth, the wild beasts, the reptiles, and the birds of the sky.
I also heard a voice say to me, ‘Get up, Peter. Slaughter and eat.’
But I said, ‘Certainly not, sir, because nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’
But a second time a voice from heaven answered, ‘What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.’
This happened three times, and then everything was drawn up again into the sky.

Probably everyone has strong feelings about what they should and should not eat. When I was a freshman at Mount Saint Francis one classmate had never eaten an orange. Perhaps, in 1962, they were new to him, as mangoes are new to us since NAFTA. He had never taken an orange in hand, peeled the rind off it, and eaten the sections. Only under the social pressure of high school freshmen did he try it, and like it.

Vikings settled and farmed in Greenland for five hundred years until the climate changed and they could not farm. They hated to leave their homeland but they would not eat fish. It was Inuit food and they considered themselves better than Inuit aborigines. History tells of other populations who preferred to starve rather than eat unfamiliar food. Not many Americans will eat bugs, cats, rats, dogs or horses. Other people do; we don’t.

So Saint Peter’s repeated objections should not sound strange to us. But the Gospel must go beyond people’s finicky tastes. It must reach people of every nation and tribe.

The gospel has sometimes been circumscribed by conventions other than food. The Roman Catholic Church proved itself very adaptable -- to a point. Until recently we refused to translate our liturgical prayers into the people’s language.  The “Changes” began when 19^th century American priests were permitted to baptize babies, witness marriages and bury the dead in the vernacular language.

Fortunately we had many devotions – the Rosary, Angelus, Stations of the Cross, litanies etc. -- which we could translate. Even priests preferred the shared rosary to their solitary Mass. Until the Second Vatican Council, popular Catholicism resembled a devotional religion like many Protestant expressions, rather than a liturgical religion. Finally we realized God could speak in any language if we would only permit him. There are some die-hard Roman Catholics and some eastern rites that have yet to get the memo.

They tell the story of the young missionary who objected to native women breast-feeding their children during the Mass. It was not seemly to him. So he arranged for the free distribution of new t-shirts to all his congregants. The people were delighted to wear the identical shirts to their Sunday celebration. However, on the second Sunday, many young mothers appeared with practical slits in the cotton fabric.  

The Gospel finds expression in our human cultures and languages, but it cannot be contained by them. The saving work of Jesus Christ is far too important for that.