INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily for this 33rd Tuesday in Ordinary Time is, “Pig, Pork
and Pepperoni.”
PIGS IN THE
SCRIPTURES
In today’s first reading from the Second Book of Maccabees, we have this story about a man named
Eleazar being forced to eat pork. If he didn’t take some, it would mean
death. And he had the courage to not eat pork, so he’s killed.
The story and the text gets us in touch with the
religious practice of Jews not eating pork. The Moslems pick up the same
practice as well as the Seven Day Adventists.
If we read the scriptures with this one practice in mind,
we can learn a lot about religious practices of people.
I assumed that pork didn’t store well - so people got
quite sick from pig and pork productions - so to save people - religious
leaders yelled that God doesn’t want you to each pig and pork. I don’t know
when pepperoni hit the world scene.
THE HAM IN THE
PAN
Last night as I was putting this homily together I was
trying to remember the story about the ham in the pan.
A teenage girl is watching her mom working on a ham for
Christmas dinner.
At one point her mom cuts off the thin end of the
ham. Her teenage daughter asked her mom
why she cut off that small end of the ham.
“Well,” her mom said, “this is the way you cook a ham.” Then she added, “That’s the way my mother did
it.”
Well she sees her grandmother cooking a ham at another
time and sure enough that end piece had been cut off. Her granddaughter asked
her, “Why she did it that way?”
Her grandmother said, “Well, that’s the way you cook ham.
And that’s the way my mom taught me.”
Her great-grandmother was still alive, so the teenage
girl asked her - while visiting her in a nursing home. “I noticed,” she said to
her great-grandmother, “that your granddaughter my mom, your daughter her mom, cut off the end piece
of a ham before cooking it. They told me that you did that. Why?"
“Oh,” said the great grandmother, "I guess the reason was because
the pan was too small.”
Question: how many things do we do in life because that’s
the way they are always done?
Question: how many things in religion do we do because
that’s the way we always did them?
AN ARTICLE
I’d like to read a good article on all this.
The article would have to get into how altar girls took a
while to get established as altar girls.
I would assume that women switching to pant suits from
dresses would be an interesting point to ponder in that article.
So too the English Mass?
Look how the world is changing in its attitudes towards
gays.
Will there be a switch to women priests one of these
years?
Is that the history of the world when it comes to
changes?
Someone makes a move. Upset happens. It continues. More
upset happens. It’s condemned. Then it continues - continues - continues.
I would hope the article would also get into seeing the mass as a Meal - get into eating at
Mass - the bread - and the comments that Jesus is the Lamb of God - and how in
the Acts of the Apostles this comes up - with arguments about Christianity
moving out of Jewish background into world background.
Then there are Hindu’s refusing to eat beef.
THE WASHING OF
HANDS AT MASS
At the Mass the priest washes his hands at the offertory.
I’ve always heard that it was because of all the food
folks brought and handed to the priest - and then it was distributed to the
poor - and hands got food dirty.
With the outbreaks of the flu virus - in came those pump
bottles of hand cleaner - we see in so many churches. I like to joke that it might become part of the Mass
in 200 years.
When a deacon serves as deacon at Mass I noticed that he pours the wine etc.
into the chalices - but then washes the priests hands. I like the water because sometimes the wine
is sticky on the cruets and it’s nice to have an opportunity to wash away the
stickiness. So it should be the deacon who washes his hands or maybe the priest
should wash the deacon’s hands.
CONCLUSION
So human beings do a lot of stuff out of custom and from
earlier generations. I suspect the best approach is the ability to laugh. For
starters, we could look at bishops hats
and blessings and all that - as well as family customs.
In the meanwhile, this is good stuff to talk about while eating pig, pork or pepperoni - maybe pizza. I’m not a great lover of pork, but
I do love a ham and cheese sandwich - and a pizza with ham, pepperoni and pineapple.
