Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent

Lectionary: 239

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.

Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,

not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter

will pass from the law,

until all things have taken place.

Most of us, looking at a tadpole and a frog, might see no resemblance between the two. Except for our high school biology we would not know the smaller animal, swimming in shallow pools, all head and tail, must become the larger, limbed creature who sits croaking on the muddy bank. A herpetologist, however, familiar with DNA, would know they are precisely the same creature. A lepidopterist would recognize a caterpillar/butterfly with the same assurance.

Many people complain that the Catholic Church changed during the 1960's, while they were away. They knew the Church as it was, or they thought they knew it, and what they see now bears no resemblance to the smoky memories of the past.

It's certainly true that the Church underwent a metamorphosis, not unlike that of tadpoles and caterpillars. If secular institutions are capable of remaining unchanged in the passage of a century -- institutions like monarchy, chess and boxing -- religions like Judaism, Islam, Eastern Orthodox and some Christian sects can resist change for a millennia! These ancient traditions spawn innumerable imitators who cop old customs and tweak them with new applications. But their spirit of renovation is not a spirit of renewal. They are misshaped butterflies or malformed toads.

Our faith evolves like natural creatures, maturing from within itself, according to its own principles. It must remain faithful to its own DNA, the Word of God.

Catholics remember that the Bible is the Word of God but the Word of God is not the Bible. The Word lived, challenged, inspired and impelled God's people long before we had paper, pen, ink or alphabet to write it down. We had, during those early years, songs, stories, laws, customs, sacred clothing, gestures and rituals which would later appear in scripture. In fact the earliest mark of faith was not the written word but the scar of circumcision; a sign which, Jeremiah and Saint Paul assured us, remains in our hearts.

Our Catholic tradition cannot evolve beyond its own identity for there can be no further revelation. Divine Revelation is complete in Jesus Christ, 

"The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ."²⁸ Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 65

A "fuller significance" realized during the twentieth century was the fundamental dialogue, or covenant, between God and the Church. Our God has revealed himself to us through the Word and, hearing it, we must respond. Our religion is not simply a code of conduct; it is a conversation with the Eternal. This discovery of personal relationship was not hidden from ages past;​ it was always there in partial and varied ways.​​ But when millions of people vanished under the impersonal machinery of war, we had to rediscover and remember our personal God who is not a machine, a principle or a law. We had to remember the dignity of every individual with their right to life, freedom, work and self-expression. The Catholic Church had to recognize even the right to worship other gods.

The pre-Vatican Council Church celebrated the "real presence" of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and the divine presence in images like the Sacred Heart. We knew the Church by the cloud of witnesses -- Mary, the saints, and angels -- who supported us in prayer. These mysteries of God's immediacy were the timeless, unchanging DNA of our faith. Those who knew those familiar icons did not feel abandoned when they heard the priest pray in English, French or German. Without hesitation the faithful opened their repertoire of music to include more than Holy God and Tantum Ergo; they learned even to sing Martin Luther's Mighty Fortress, along with some of the execrable folk songs of the sixties. They welcomed the opportunity to receive the Eucharist weekly and daily. They recognize that neither the Mass nor the Church had changed. It was rough going at times and that distress is not over yet. Nor should it be. But the caterpillar learned to fly; the tadpole learned to leap. And we have learned to share our belief in Jesus, the Son of God, a man like us in all things but sin.