A Reflection for Tuesday of the Twenty-first Week in Atypical Time
“Due to this fact, brothers and sisters, stand firm
and hold fast to the traditions that you simply were taught,
either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours.” (2 Thessalonians 2:15)
I’m struck in today’s readings by the firmness and weightiness that the Scripture authors employ of their language. From the primary reading: “We ask you…to not be shaken”; “brothers and sisters, stand firm”. From the psalm: “He has made the world firm, to not be moved.” Within the Gospel: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees…[you] have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity.”
I do know exactly why this language stands out to me. Last week, I ended up within the hospital, faced with some difficult health decisions. (I’m okay now!) And, as often happens in moments of crisis, I discovered myself instinctively reaching for a Rosary, or rattling off a long time on my fingers to quiet my anxious thoughts. In recent days, I’ve appreciated how having a loved one within the hospital awakens what I lovingly call the “old church lady” in everyone—friends are calling on the phone (an exceptional feat for us Millennials); acquaintances are offering to drop off dinner (or, in a more modern twist, offering to order us UberEats); Jesuits are saying Masses for us; one Catholic Employee I do know stepped away from Maryhouse’s never-ending chores to hope within the chapel; my mom even sent me a Mary medal with a prayer straight out of the Nineteen Fifties: “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who’ve recourse to thee.” (A fast Google search reveals it’s actually from the 1800s, but you get the purpose.)
It might be obvious from my response to these items that I’m not a traditionalist Catholic. I prefer contemplative prayer to rote; “Here I Am, Lord” to “How Great Thou Art”; Mass in a faculty gym with felt banners to Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. Yet here I used to be within the hospital, praying with all of the “thee”s and “thou”s and considering, nevertheless improbably, perhaps I should do a novena. A novena!
I’m struck in today’s readings by the firmness and weightiness that the Scripture authors employ of their language.
What’s it about crises that makes so a lot of us into “old church ladies”? I believe it has to do with the “weightiness” alluded to in today’s Scriptures. I’m touched by the road from the primary reading: “Hold fast to the traditions you were taught…by an oral statement.” When Pope Francis was first elected, he moved the hearts of the group in St. Peter’s Square by leading them in the straightforward prayers which can be the primary ones Catholics learn through oral tradition, before we are able to even read: The Hail Mary, the Our Father, the Glory Be. In times of crises, we return to those basics. They hold the burden of centuries, which is palpable of their outdated language. They’re a firm hold when every little thing else is spinning uncontrolled.
However the “weightiness” invoked within the Scriptures describes rather more than rote prayers and even “church lady” traditions like dropping off a casserole for somebody sick. Jesus says in today’s Gospel: “You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and you might have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity. But these you need to have done, without neglecting the others.”
Ultimately, the traditions that feel weighty—the novenas, the Rosaries—that we turn to because they offer us words to say after we don’t have any, could be as empty because the tithes of the scribes and Pharisees. The true weight, which on no account comes on the expense of the traditions but fulfills them, lies within the virtues at their root. It’s not the Hail Mary that matters a lot as the religion; not the words of reassurance a lot because the hope; not the casseroles or Uber Eats a lot because the love.
