The word “religion”—from the Latin religare, meaning “to bind fast”—among other things communicates religion’s binding force that links us to a people—many or even most of whom we would not otherwise freely choose to identify ourselves or associate with. But for Christians this is the heartbeat of religion, a uniting all humanity together as one family, in love, under one common Father. Heaven would be hell for any who wish it otherwise.
This is all bloody hard, which makes it very tempting to opt for becoming “spiritual, not religious.” Religion binds us to the whole sordid lot of humanity, heroes and hypocrites, and then demands that we journey back to God together. Fixed to the cross by his neighbors, Jesus exposes the redemptive cost of religion’s binding force, as he obeyed love’s logic to the very end. “This is my Body, which is for you” subverts the idolatrous logic of a culture which exalts the autonomous self that seeks its fulfillment in the construction of god and neighbor in its own image and likeness.
--Dr. Tom Neal, “Holy (Unchosen) Family”
Image source: Michael receives his First Communion, accompanied by Cyd and Paul, First Communion Mass, 2023, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=627708542727897&set=a.627712242727527
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