June 13th,
2006 - Our Community... Our Church
My initial
university training was as a psychological anthropologist
which to many seems to be rather unusual. Well, actually...
it is, but it has held me in good stead throughout my life,
and now my ministry. The people of God come from all corners
of the world and bring with them wonderful cultures,
traditions... and foods! (People who know me know that I
love very spicy foods from all over the world.)
I feel that
Toronto is blessed with the most diverse Catholic population
in North America... we come from everywhere and come here to
call Canada our home. As I have said before in my homilies,
we all come from somewhere else, whether it was last year,
or hundreds of years ago, we all claim status as people from
other places. I have met people from Nigeria, Ghana, China,
Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, Ireland, Portugal, Goa,
Scotland, France, the Caribbean, Malta, Saudi Arabia... but
the great part of our community is that we all come to Sts.
Martha and Mary to praise and worship God as members of the
Universal Church, and the mystical body of Christ.
Our diverse
cultures give us the flavour of our origins which we find in
our dress, our food, our language, sometimes our devotions,
and our common faith draws us together as one united in
prayer.
When we pray the
Our Father as a community all diversity melts away into one
common prayer to God, and when we sing... well... that is
when the beauty of prayer is magnified and the joy of
creation swirls around the altar. You don't have to have a
great voice in order to add your voice in song, which was
one of the reasons for Gregorian chant, it was for people
who could not sing, but together their voices blend into the
beautiful contemplative prayer of the Church. Our modern and
traditional hymns give us the same advantage.
We are called to
take pride in God's creation and within that are the
cultures from which we come. Sts. Martha and Mary truly has
the feeling of a diverse community of people and cultures,
and may we never lose that feeling. When we gather and
become one as Church, we transport ourselves into the sacred
space God provides for worship, and may we never lose that
feeling either!
Fr. Peter
