<\/p>\n
Today, our first reading talks about the very first Church Council, the Council of Jerusalem.\u00a0 The Earliest Christians were a Jewish sect that accepted Jesus as the Messiah, and spun off from Judaism.\u00a0 But they brought all of the ritual and legal baggage of the strict observance of the Mosaic Law with them. Now Paul and Barnabas return from their newly founded Churches amongst the Gentiles.\u00a0 These Gentiles accepted all that Jesus taught and practiced; and wonderful things were reported about how God worked through them.\u00a0 But they could not relate to the laws and ritual practices of the Jews- things like detailed food laws and circumcision.\u00a0 And so, the Church was faced with a decision- to accept them or not.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Peter and James, and the whole assembly in unison, decided that what was important was Jesus teaching, not traditional rituals, laws and practices.\u00a0 So, they decided to emphasize the direction they had been given by Jesus.<\/p>\n
What was that direction?\u00a0 To go out and Baptize all nations, even the Gentiles.\u00a0 And so, they abandoned laws for the sake of maintaining tradition, in favor of being inclusive and open to all.\u00a0 In so doing, they adopted what Jesus teaches in the Gospel this morning, namely.\u00a0 \u201cIf you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father\u2019s commandments and remain in his love.\u201d\u00a0 Jesus primary commandment was to love God, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.\u00a0 Yes, love should be the primary ingredient of our dealings with others.\u00a0 And so out of love, we keep the \u201cdetailed\u201d commandments.\u00a0 Our mission is to bring others over to our side by the love we show, so that they will embrace us and our way.\u00a0 We can\u2019t do that by imposing our rules on them, just as Paul and Barnabas couldn\u2019t do it with the first Gentiles.\u00a0 We can do it by loving them and showing mercy.<\/p>\n
I think that this is the essence of what Pope Francis is trying to do in his Apostolic Exhortation on the Family.\u00a0 In recent years, we have all been inundated with a secular wave of attacks on our family institutions.\u00a0 So, we see society pushing \u201cAlternate family structures\u201d instead of the Traditional Family Unit; individual rights, like the \u201cright to choose\u201d rather than the right to life; and the right to choose one\u2019s sexual preference as opposed to the way God made us.\u00a0 Pope Francis Apostolic Exhortation on the Family validated all of the traditional Church teachings on these issues.\u00a0 The Church has not changed its teaching, and it is important that all of us recognize that is the case independent of what the media may have reported.<\/p>\n
However, there are other matters relating to the family that have arisen over the last 100 years, areas where culture has changed, and families have changed with it.\u00a0 This includes families with working men and working women; separation of multigenerational families; divorced and separated couples with shared responsibility for the children; and others.\u00a0 The Pope has suggested that we emphasize love, mercy, and forgiveness in dealing with those who have gone awry in these areas rather than throwing up walls based on strict adherence to the rules.\u00a0 His exhortation asks Church leaders to discern before acting in these areas rather than acting on the basis of the rule of law alone.<\/p>\n
Granted, this is much harder to do.\u00a0 But it is a dilemma much like the one we heard about in this morning\u2019s first reading, where the culture of the Jews was so imbedded in their religion that it never occurred to them that it was turning the Gentiles off.\u00a0 Our response today requires the same kind of discerning spirit as at the Council of Jerusalem.\u00a0 At the very least, those who violate the rules need to be treated with love and mercy.<\/p>\n
I encourage all of you to read Pope Francis Exhortation on the Family.\u00a0 It is available on-line for free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter Acts 15: 7-21; John 15: 9-11 By Deacon Larry Brockman Today, our first reading talks about the very first Church Council, the Council of Jerusalem.\u00a0 The Earliest Christians were a Jewish sect that accepted Jesus as the Messiah, and spun off from Judaism.\u00a0 But they brought all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[417],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":873,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions\/873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}