World Day of Prayer for Creation

It has been decided by the Holy Spirit and by ourselves not to saddle you with any burden beyond these essentials:  you are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from fornication. Avoid these, and you will do what is right. Farewell.

Acts of the Apostles 15: 28 - 29 

On the sixth Sunday of Easter [Year C], we would hear this reading proclaimed from the ambo. 

[The ambo used to be called the lectern and this word was changed together with the introduction of the new Missal.]

AND you may say these, especially the first three essentials, do not apply to me.  Fr Alan said, "The Church does not put any Word in front of us which has nothing to do with us."

Fr Alan said in the early Church, they had all sorts of disagreement and argument, including whether Christians should be circumcised. They had a dialogue and agreed on the above four essentials.

However, Fr Alan said, "We should understand the situation in the primitive Church." Most of the early converts were surrounded by a sea of pagans and people who practise other religions. These people would take animals to their temples and make sacrifices and the meat of the animal was supposed to be burnt as pagan sacrifices. However, there were unscrupulous people who would take the meat to the market to sell.

Thus abstaining from food sacrificed to idols means to keep our hands clean with money, according to Fr Alan. So we have to earn and spend our money honestly and Fr Alan has said, "Christians pay their taxes."

I have posted something already in which I reported Fr Alan not wanting dirty money at St Charles, Ogle Street.  Fr Alan said, "They are more people in hell because of money than because of sex. Money is more dangerous than sex." Fr Alan said, "We are so mesmerised by money."

Do not touch blood and this means we must not fiddle with life. For the Jewish people, blood means life. 

Fr Alan said, "Do not touch life." This would include our not having anything to do euthanasia, manipulation of genes, cloning, IVF, abortion and many other modern biotechnological advances which manipulates God's creation, including genetically modified food. Fr Alan said if we were to touch life, we would not know where we would end up. 

Regarding strangled animals: During the time of the early Church, the Jews killed animals using kosher means and the people outside the Jewish faith killed their animals inhumanely, such as strangling animals. 

Fr Alan said, "Not eating strangled animals means we have to respect all of God's creation (including little animals) and today we have "raped" the earth." This is very pertinent to us today, Pope Francis has called for today to be the World Day of Prayer for Creation. We have abused mother earth with our excessive consumption, waste, disregard for the environment and it is time for us to pray about it and perhaps God can change our hearts and make us more environmentally friendly and care for God's little creatures. 

Regarding fornication, Fr Alan said the non Christians at that time of the early Church would marry with people of their own sex, or engage in sexual relationships with animals, and they were incestuous.  

Some people think same sex marriage is a creation of the 21st century. However, not so! In another Catholic Bible, fornication is translated as illicit marriages. And as our nation becomes de-Christianized..., we will have to protect Christian marriages, according to Fr Alan.

Fr Alan also said, "Pagan is not a pejorative word." Fr Alan said, "It is better to be a good honest pagan, than be a faked Christian." Faked Christians are those who are half-baked, having a pick and mix attitude towards their Christian faith, taking what they like from Christianity and ignoring the rest.

Almighty God, help us not to destroy life and our environment. Help us to look at the risen Christ, so we can have Jesus' spirit and are able to live a Christian life - respecting all life and our environment, loving mother earth, having clean hands when dealing with money, having moral relationships with others including loving ALL of God's creatures. Amen.