and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
REFLECTION
"Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division."
An observation.
Is there division amongst people? Amongst Christians? Amongst Catholics?
We tend to have a mentality of "us vs them" more often than none. For example, in our own Church, we have the people that would rather attend Mass in the vernacular. We also have those that call themselves "Trad-Cath" (or Traditional Catholic).
Traditional Catholics tend to be very pious, and follow Christ in a more strict way than most of us. Their preferred Mass is the Latin Mass of the 1962 missal. I don't have a problem with the Latin Mass, which is truly beautiful. It is a Royal Mass.
Where things start getting strange is when people that would rather attend Mass in Latin treat all others like we are heathens.
If we were to use the argument above, then, what could stop someone from saying that the Roman Rite is better than the Byzantine, or the Chaldean, the Malabar, or the Coptic?
At this point I have to ask, who benefits when we criticize each other?
This division of which Mass is better, and who is a true believer is really damaging to our Church.
We truly need to focus ourselves in the Eucharist, and the miracle that Jesus at every Mass gives Himself to us through the hands of a priest.
Once we start loving Jesus, who loved us first, we might start understanding and appreciating the richness and beauty that our mother the Catholic Church has to offer through different cultures around the world.
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