Thursday, January 30, 2025

But we need to make it ours. . .

I will confess that early on in my professional life I was also enamored with the idea of inculturation.  It seemed only logical to me that in order for the liturgy to be effective, we must make it ours.  That old word has given way to a contextual liturgy (and even theology!).  It did not take long for me to decide that this was working the wrong way.  We should be inculturated into the Lord and His kingdom -- not the other way around.  The liturgy is not a toy for us to experiment with but a treasure and blessing through which God distributes to us His gifts.  We are the ones who need to be inculturated into His domain and not the other way around.  We do not need to make God and the things of God ours but we need to be made His.

Anyway, it seems curious that along the way we have stereotyped ourselves into the lie that our liturgy is German or Western and therefore does not translate well into other cultures.  Pope Francis recently approved a Mayan version of the Mass -- hopefully without child sacrifice?!?  The point being that this has become an almost universal idea that the faith and how we worship must become particular.  It is the strangest of things.  

The task of the Church is not to accommodate other cultures but to predominate the culture of Christ and the Kingdom of God.  We do not need to adapt to or adopt from other cultures in order to be relevant but just the other way around.  The Church is not subordinate to culture but the transformer of culture.  It is the job and task of Christianity to forge an identity apart from any particular culture.  Christianity did not adapt or adopt Roman culture or any other in order to be successful in the proclamation of the Gospel but introduced the culture of Christ and His Kingdom to cultures all along the way.  And it worked.  Rome imploded as an empire but Christianity endured.  So it has been through time and with the cultures, civilizations, and empires.  They come and go but Christ endures in the outpost of the Kingdom that is the Church.  We do not need to make God ours or His kingdom but the kingdom and Christ need to make us His or we will only be temporary.  The Church is eternal and we are eternal as the baptized believers whom God has made His own.  Anything else is merely musical chairs.

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