ANOTHER WORD FOR ‘MULTI-CULTURAL’

    We have a wonderfully diverse parish here at Our Savior. We have folks who were born (and partly raised) in all kinds of countries, with all kinds of customs, and (if you remember my homily from this past weekend) all kinds of foods!

    Our parish has been blessed by the presence and participation of folks from so many different places. We have contingents from Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, India, Russia, and Lebanon. We have had folks from Nigeria and Uganda. We have and have had members hailing from Poland, Slovakia, Italy, Germany, Ireland, and Spain. We have welcomed people from Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela, and Chile. We even have folks from north of the Ohio River!!

It reminds me of the famous description of the Church by James Joyce: “Here comes everybody!”

One of the themes of Vatican Council II in Sacrosanctum Concilium (the document on the Liturgy) was that of “inculturation.” It meant that we must never be afraid to allow local cultures to express their love of the Lord in their own styles. They do NOT have to be forced into forms of worship that are distinctly European in style and history. When I was in college (some time before Thomas Aquinas) a recording of “Missa Luba” was popular—with African rhythms and lovely melodies and powerful singing. It was great! If we had taken this lesson to heart some centuries earlier, instead of forcing the Latin language and liturgy on them, we might well have today a far larger body of Catholics in places like India, China, Japan, and other places in the Far East…

This leads me to the weekend and our Multi-Cultural Festival. OF COURSE we want to celebrate our diversity, a diversity that invigorates us in our unity! Back to food—I want my kielbasa, I want my fajitas, I want my spaghetti carbonara, I want my falafel, I want my schnitzel, I want my Guinness, I want my curry, I want my sushi… You get the picture, and it’s all delicious and all wonderful and all so worth celebrating.

So: what is another word for ‘multi-cultural’? The answer is ‘catholic’! We are the universal Church, welcoming everyone. We preach the Gospel to ALL nations (Luke 24:47). We welcome Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, women and men (Galatians 3:27-28). Who are the equivalents of these groups today? We’d better be ready to be open to them. We want the Catholic Church truly to be a ‘catholic’ Catholic Church. And the taste of what that might be like will be our multi-cultural festival this weekend.                                                                                                            -Fr. David