100/227. My Book pp. 144-145. Post No. 1379.
MY COMMENT :
Some people – a fraction of those who used to fill churches on Sunday – still put up with Gospel readings of Jesus’ “miracles” which they have heard umpteen times before – so familiar, in fact, that they believe they actually happened.
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Surfers surf. And when they are not at it, they are flat on their boards looking for the Big One (except in California). Today, in Bidart, the French Basque village on the sea, I saw one of them apparently walking on the water, in fact, standing up on his board, cresting the waves (admittedly small), instead of respecting tradition by lying on it.
Jesus, it seems, walked on water – without a surfboard. The chief Apostle thought he could do the same and Peter plunged.
Week after week, year after year, Christian congregations hear the reading of Gospel stories like this. Is the challenge greater for them to listen to it all again, or for the preacher to say something new, or at least worth listening to, about such a “miracle” ?
I now believe it doesn’t matter a damn to either congregation or preacher. The point is repetition and recognition. Say it, read it, often enough, and it becomes unquestioned truth. Like politicians’ promises, like advertising and commercial jingles. The Church is in the communication business. People need, or at least want, to hear the same stories again and again. It is reassuring, a drug, a sleeping pill, and anti-intellectual lulling to sleep of our normal powers of rational and critical analysis. Add a hymn or two, the beauty and power of the liturgy, its music, its vestments, the charism or at least the presumed sincerity of the celebrant, and it’s a done deal.
“What were the readings today, and what did Father say in his sermon ?”, an invalid relative might ask those fortunate enough to have been able to go to Mass that Sunday morning. Both were so eminently forgettable and insignificant that all one can say is that the Mass was marvellous and that Father was, as usual, fabulous. The miracle remains not only unexplained but unquestioned, and totally unenlightening. ”Ite missa est” (“Go, the Mass is ended”). See you next Sunday. You’ll love it : it’s about a man born blind.
RIDENDA RELIGIO