Oblates of St. Francis de Sales

New DeSales World Newsletter - Summer Edition

22ND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (September 3, 2006)

Readings Dt 4: 1-2, 6-8 Ps 15: 2-5 Jas 1: 17-18, 21b-22, 27 Mk 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Suggested Emphasis

"Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls."

Salesian Perspective

Traditions are powerful things. Whether they deal with the making of Grandmother's special casserole for our Thanksgiving meal, with who hosts for Christmas and Easter, with where we go for family vacation, with rituals around the death of a loved one, or with something so simple as who sits where around the dinner table, traditions are part and parcel of all of our lives. When they are positive ones, traditions can give us a sense of identity, stability and value when our lives are filled with change.

But traditions can be negative too; especially when they become detached from the values they were meant to support and protect. Jesus knew that all too well as today's gospel account suggests. He challenged the Pharisees in their use of the laws regarding ritual purity. Jesus saw them using the traditions to unfairly judge others as being "in" or "out" of the circle of God's mercy and love, as if they, and not God, were the determiners of righteousness and religious worthiness!

God's Word this Sunday certainly challenges us to look at the power of tradition(s) in our lives. If they are positive, then we should continue to make them part of our lives. But if they are negative behaviors or even attitudes--old grudges we just can't forget, old hurts we just can't forgive, old patterns of destructive choosing or thinking that we just can't seem to escape--then, with the grace of God already "planted within us," we need to do something new to change them.

St. Francis de Sales suggests, when these old negative "traditions" make us less than the child of God we are redeemed to be, that we concentrate on the "present moment." We are not defined by our past nor can we do anything about it except forgive it. The future is yet to be. But what we do have is the here and now, the present moment, and the grace of God in that moment.

It is only in the present moment that we can replace old negative behaviors and attitudes with new, life affirming ones. When we concentrate on accessing the power of God planted within us to make new choices "present moment" to "present moment," we are well on our way to starting new, positive "traditions" which will sustain us now and mold us, for the future, as people who "do justice and live in the presence of the Lord."

With God's grace, let us start a new tradition of living in the "present moment." That's a tradition worth keeping over time…for a lifetime!

Rev. Michael S. Murray, OSFS, is the Executive Director of the De Sales Spirituality Center.