The Holy Catholic Church: Ruth 1:8-18
“your people will be my people, your God will be my God.”
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
We belong to a Church that is described with four words: One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. All these depictions appear in the extensive statement of faith – the Nicene Creed. Each of these words has deep roots and meanings, but for now let us reflect about the Church Catholic. The synonyms for the term ‘Catholic’ are: wide-ranging, broad, wide-reaching, all-embracing, extensive, varied. The antonyms include conservative, conformist, unadventurous. A good illustration is the story of one of the great grandmothers of Jesus Christ, Ruth.
Ruth was a Moabite (not an Israelite), whose Israelite husband died while they lived in the land of Moab. For her mother-in-law Naomi, Chinua Achebe’s saying was true, that “When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.” A foreigner who is not only bereft of a husband and two sons but also left with the ‘burden’ of two young widows! Naomi stopped understanding the meaning of her name because there was no more ‘pleasantness’, at least for the time being.
Ruth helps unveil a truth which is always lying under every alliance and relationship – the spiritual alliance. It is not clear why she so chose, but probably even earlier during her marriage, she had totally left and cleft – left her people with all their background and worship, and cleft to her husband not just as a son of Elimelech but a grandson of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and belonging to the people of the Almighty God. Ruth seems to have clearly meditated her new status and in utter clarity communicated the same much later to this returning sorrowful mother. Naomi did her best to point these ‘foreign women’ back to their people, but for Ruth all that fell on deaf ears. Her punch line was, ‘your people will be my people, your God will be my God’.
The heart of a total commitment must be spiritual if the commitment is to stand the test of time. That Ruth was accepted and grafted into a royal (to be) family of the chosen people of God is evidence that our God will not reject anyone that comes to Him. The Church is all-embracing, wide-reaching, welcoming to all who seek God with a heart of commitment, no matter your race, gender, social or economic status, background… all are welcome – the Church is Catholic.
God bless you all.