The year 2010 is a new beginning, which can be a blessing for us. To begin on a different note, I muse about wedding receptions. For the couple, the celebration is a huge new start of their public life together. In my 41 years of pastoral ministry I have happily attended more than most folks, at least enough to have learned, by observation, the Electric Slide. I like to accept the newly married couple’s invitation. It is a true kindness when he and she invite the priest who helped them through the pre-marital process: Pre-Cana, liturgy planning, FOCCUS inventory, and more. We priests never assume we are automatically invited.
Some priests decline the invitation. They feel out of place. After all, if ever there were a social celebration meant for couples, it is this. Then, too, there is all that garter bacchanalia. My humble suggestion to improve on a good thing is for the couple to issue headphones to each guest as he or she picks up his or her seat assignment. That way the music could be as absolutely loud as someone wants it, but not so intrusive that it makes impossible any table conversation. I think I have noted unscientifically that the louder the music, the less permanent is the eventual marriage. Disc jockies have to make a living. They are quite creative as entertainers and help everyone have a good time. Couples may instruct them about music volume.
Pastorally, receptions are good places to connect with Catholics who no longer attend church. Perhaps with the help of the god Bacchus, lord of wine and spirits, they loosen up and approach the priest in uniform to vent. The conversation, almost always initiated by the other person, is genial enough. After all, there is no obligation to attend Mass or confession to get Father’s answer to why, for instance, we always do the same thing at Mass. It tires some that the ritual is so repetitious, except for the sermon.
The person who says he or she no longer attends often blames it on political homilies. Why, the last time they went to church the priest or deacon relayed the U.S. bishops’ condemnation of the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. It must have been a hard thing for them to forgive. Or perhaps he may have cited Pope John XXIII’s 1963 assertion that affordable health care is a right of every person. Granted, John could not have known that in 2009 this would be a mightily contested battle, but Father certainly knew.
Why can’t they keep things like wars and insurance and immigration and women’s equality and handgun ownership out of church? Don’t priests know that people who do come to church want to hear about Jesus? He had nothing so say about all this, did he?
Actually he was crucified for being so insistent about them, daring to speak publicly about some kind of Kingdom of God. If he had instead spoken about a democratic republic of God, we would have no leg on which to stand while blocking our ears to political sermons. In this Kingdom, all earth’s people are subjects of God who is King. This is a King who is all benevolent and kind, wanting no single person anywhere to be abused or bilked or to suffer discrimination, like losing a job because of age.
He was crucified by the political state, headed locally by Pilate who had the full force of Caesar behind him. His orders were to tolerate no rival rule or kingdom that would threaten Rome’s hegemony. Jesus was hardly the first to galvanize Jews against the cruel occupation and taxation to which they had been subject since 63 B.C. when General Pompey conquered Israel. The Acts of the Apostles says that a certain Theudas was also killed by the Romans for trying to lead a revolution. Jewish historian Josephus Flavius narrates how the Jews in Jesus’s time were one of Rome’s most rebellious colonies.
Jesus knew exactly what he was saying and what the political realities of his Israel were. He would habitually urge his audience to practice fairness and honesty in all dealings with others, loving them as they loved themselves. In fact he astounded the critical Pharisees by equating the Torah law about love for God with that for neighbor. So when I hear this self-exculpating complaint over the din of a reception, I have a clue how familiar the person is with the New Testament and its social gospel.
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