Rules and relations

Tuesday of the 2nd Week of Ordinary Time

Samuel 16:1-13 Ps. 89:20, 21-22, 27-28 Mark 2:23-28

I was a catechist in our parish’s OCIA program for a number of years. People come to the church for all sorts of reasons, from all sorts of places, and they have all kinds of questions. We encourage them to come to mass frequently, and then they come back to class with even more questions: Why do you do - ? Why did I see someone do - What does it mean when - Once I sat down but everyone else knelt was this wrong? Is it OK if I - I accidentally forgot to and is this OK and so forth. For a little while, all they can do is sit, confused, confronted by an utterly baffling set of rules and rituals and none of it makes sense.

Of course none of it makes sense. Not at first. The rules are important, but only because they refer to something else. They flow from somewhere, and that’s where we should be spending our time.

If you studied a couple who have been married for a really long time, you could probably put together a decently-sized book that listed out all the little things they do for one another. The things that they say, or don’t say. The many little gestures that demonstrate the deep and abiding love they have for one another. The inside jokes that sprout from share memories, and so on. You’d have that book, but if you just had that book and read it cover to cover, you’d no more understand their marriage than the Man in the Moon.

The relationship comes first, then the rules. The relationship is source of all the little things, and without it, that entire book is just a list of interesting trivia. This doesn’t mean the rules aren’t important, but they’re not the point. They’re the means to a much more glorious end, and it’s the same end which, paradoxically, causes all of the little things to grow.

There’s a reason why the scriptures are filled from one end to the other with nuptial imagery. Our faith isn’t a matter of rules, but a relationship - an encounter - with a Person, and when our relationship with that person is rightly ordered, the rules aren’t just rules, they’re the little things that adorn something that’s already beautiful.

St. William, pray for us. St. Sebastian the Martyr, pray for us. St. Fabian, pray for us.