Moving beyond familiarity

One of the many fruits of the Second Vatican Council was a much stronger emphasis on the inspired word of God within the celebration of the sacraments of the Church.

Most important of these sacraments is, of course, the holy Mass, which now features much more Scripture than it did before 1969. But other sacraments also benefited from this renewed emphasis on Scripture. Baptism, the anointing of the sick (formerly known as extreme unction), and reconciliation are all now rooted much more explicitly within a proclamation of God’s inspired word.

The sacraments are celebrations of saving faith, and faith begins with hearing. And so, it is the spoken revelation of God’s love and life, which is the word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword, that penetrates the hearts of men and women, opening the space where grace can liberate and bring life. Into this space floods the sacramental life of the Church.

Unfortunately, for far too many of us, the Liturgy of the Word at Mass is often just something we feel we need to endure until the reception of holy Communion. This is probably true for many reasons. We live in a distracted age, where images are often needed to engage the mind trained to scroll and stream. Much of Scripture can also be quite obscure, and its references and style can be very foreign to our ears. Often passages require some explanation and context to fully understand, and even the preacher can be rather deficient in his ability to illuminate the text. And then there is the challenge of familiarity. While few believers would ever say that familiarity with Scripture has led to contempt, having heard the same parables of Jesus year after year, it can be quite easy for us to tune them out. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one…” And having convinced ourselves that we know what the passage means, or that we will never know, we just stop listening.

How similar these attitudes and pitfalls can be to our relationships with one another. Every human person is a miracle, a creature made in the image and likeness of God with a destiny that is eternal. And yet so often we encounter one another with an attitude that betrays our unwillingness to listen. Our lives are so frenetic (by our own choice, let it be said), we find it nearly impossible to slow down and listen to one another. Most of the time, we’re just waiting for the other person to stop talking so we can tell them what we think or move on to the next thing.

Then, like Scripture, there is the obscurity issue. People are complicated, with histories and wounds and motivations born of a thousand different influences. Because people are complicated and their lives messy, we can easily just tune them out, unwilling to pay the price of time and effort that is needed to truly love them.

Finally, there is that familiarity trap. This is of course most problematic in those relationships that have existed in our lives for some time, like relationships with spouses, siblings, lifelong friends or longtime coworkers. We really think we’ve figured them out, and we begin to be unwilling or even unable to truly hear them. Pope Francis has reminded us that our God is a God of surprises. But do we also recognize that our neighbors are capable of surprising us, too? Or have we placed them in a box, labeled it, and rest assured that we’ve got this one figured out.

The solutions to both problems are the same. First, we must ask the Lord for the grace to truly listen, both to Scripture and to one another. We must ask him for the grace to see one another, each of us unique, irreplaceable and a vessel of grace. We also should take some time to study –– there are many Scripture studies out there that if we took some time to engage with them, our understanding of Scripture would increase. So, too, with one another –– we need to try to understand where the other is coming from. This kind of studying is different than the studying we engage in to understand Scripture. To “study” another human being, we take the time to try to think of what they are going through, how they might perceive things, and why they act as they do. This is not to excuse bad behavior or to justify wrongs. No personal struggles can legitimize sin. But to love the other means we must try to see the other, in all their foibles and nobility.

As for the pitfalls of familiarity with both one another and Scripture, one remedy is to try to remember that Scripture, like my fellow human being, is not here to entertain me or to keep me interested. Scripture and neighbor, every neighbor, must be encountered as a call to change oneself, or rather, to let God form and change us. We find Scripture and neighbor boring oftentimes because we are boring, stubborn and closed-minded, comfortable with our own insights and prejudices. The root of apathy is within our own heart.

And so may the Lord open the ears of our hearts so that we may fruitfully receive his word, a word spoken in flesh and in truth, in proclamation and person.

Father Erickson is parochial vicar of Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul and interim chairman of the Archdiocesan Liturgical Commission. Father Erickson also was director of the archdiocese’s Office of Worship from 2008 to 2018.