(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Mass-Blog-for-the-33rd-Sunday-of-Ordinary-Time-2024.mp3)
Christians and their Jewish brothers and sisters have one major element of faith in common: both believe in reincarnation. The reincarnation of God’s word, that is. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, the immortality of God’s word is paramount, from the Psalms and prophets to all the gospels.
But God’s word can’t be contained by a Bible’s bindings. It spills out into the hearts of everyone inspired by it. The folk music of Woody Guthrie offers a vibrant example of one of those hearts.
Guthrie was an artist with Christian beliefs who married a Jewish woman, so he immersed himself in a variety of faith traditions. He is best remembered for writing the folk song “This Land is Your Land” (“this land was made for you and me”), but he also wrote a tune that could be the theme song of this Sunday’s Mass: “Pass Away.” The gospel reading from Mark (Mk 13:24-32) contains its core lyric, straight from the mouth of Jesus:
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never ever pass away.”
Much of Guthrie’s Christian/Jewish-inspired music might have passed away if not for his daughter Nora, who, according to an article in the Jerusalem Post, gave pages of her father’s lost lyrics to the Klezmatics (a Jewish Klezmer band). They won a Grammy in 2007 for giving Guthrie’s words—which were Jesus’ words—which were God’s words—new life.
The Klezmatics’ version of Pass Away is a 21st Century reincarnation of God’s words, but those words have lived for centuries throughout the Bible, including these passages:
Psalm 119:89—“Your word, LORD, stands forever;it is firm as the heavens.”
Isaiah 40:8—“The grass withers, the flower wilts, but the word of our God stands forever.”
Back to this Sunday’s liturgy, we can see that the immortality of God’s word promises eternal life to everyone living it. In the first reading from Daniel, he tells us the effect of hearing and acting on God’s word:
“The wise shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament, and those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever.” (Dn 12:1-3)
Acting on God’s word means taking it from a sacrament and bringing it to life. Spreading it becomes an act of consecration by which our world is made sacred.
One of the laws Christians share with their Jewish brothers and sisters has to do with keeping certain things kosher. Kosher means pure, or clean, and for the founder of Christianity, the term applied as much to the bodies into which we feed food as to the containers in which we store it. We should think of ourselves as earthen vessels made from holy ground—therefore made suitable for containing and distributing God’s word.
In that way, we become part of a sacrament ensuring that God’s word will never pass away because it will continue to be passed on. It will be preserved in earthen vessels fashioned from the same holy ground out of which sprouted the burning bush through which Moses first heard God’s word.
(Holy Groundalso happens to be another musical legacy by which Woody Guthrie distributed God’s word.)
–Tom Andel
Some of my Protestant friends who sincerely love the Lord, entirely rely on “God’s word” in sacred scripture as the complete foundation for their belief in Jesus Christ and their faith life.
The challenge this presents is it settles on their own personal interpretation of the Bible, and they are actually critical of church authority when it differs from their view.
Following the magisterium and 2000 years of Catholic doctrine and dogma is a comforting thought to me. I don’t have to guess what Jesus or St. Paul or the other authors of Sacred Scripture mean, because it has been vetted and is clearly explained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
We just simply need to have the faith of children and follow Christ through the church he started for us. The church through its centuries of flawed men, all the way back to the apostles has had errors and corruption, but its teachings are pure and true!
Guthrie, like all of us humans, was broken. He searched for wholeness through his music. The Holy Spirit has used many broken people to work miracles, and Jesus’ many cures continue to inspire 2000 years later. That inspiration of God’s word incarnate will never pass away.
One of the Catholic Church’s great saints, Thomas Aquinas, taught that “The very hiding of truth in figures is useful for the exercise of thoughtful minds.” Guthrie couldn’t deny that, and the fact that his search for truth continues to inspire others to search is a modern-day miracle.
Guthrie once said that although he seldom worshiped “in or around churches,” he “always had a deep love for people who go there.” Wherever Guthrie went, if songs like the ones mentioned here draw strangers to search for God, that’s a good first step toward delivering them from evil.