The following was written by a 12-year-old from Boston:

Now I lay me down in school,
where praying is against the rule.
For this great nation under God,
finds mention of him very odd.
If Scripture now the class recites,
it violates the Bill of Rights.
Anytime my head I bow,
becomes a federal matter now.
The law is specific; the law is precise;
praying out loud is no longer nice.
Praying aloud in a public hall,
upsets those who believe in nothing at all.
In silence alone we can meditate,
and if God should get the credit—great!
They are bringing their guns,
I don’t dare bring my Bible;
to do so might make me liable.
So now, oh Lord, this plea I make:
Should I be shot in school, my soul please take.

This perceptive 12-year-old might not consciously realize it, but in her little poem she is challenging some of the beliefs of what I would call the "prevailing religion of our culture." Which means she’s doing something akin to what Jesus did 2,000 years ago. As we see over and over again in Scripture, our Lord constantly challenged some of the beliefs found in the prevailing religion of his culture. A perfect example of the phenomenon is found in today’s Gospel story from Mark 2. There we are told that some people approach our Lord, and they ask him why his disciples don’t fast like the Pharisees and disciples of John the Baptist do. This was actually a very logical question for devout Jews to ask. Because even though they were only obligated to fast once a year on the Day of Atonement, those Jews who took their faith seriously usually fasted on Mondays and Thursdays each week. And so, in effect, these people were saying to Jesus, "You and your disciples claim to love God like the Pharisees and John’s disciples do; you claim to take your religion as seriously as they take theirs, so why don’t you deny yourselves and fast like they do?"

Jesus doesn’t criticize the practice of fasting in his response, but he does challenge his questioners to open their minds to a deeper truth about himself: that he is the bridegroom, and that as long as he’s present among them it’s inappropriate to fast. Now it may not be immediately obvious to us, but I would say that this was actually a challenge for them to accept his divinity. Why do I say that? Well, in the Old Testament, God the Father was often personified as a husband, and his people—the Israelites—were portrayed as his spouse. This is why it’s not a coincidence that our first reading today was from the Book of Hosea. In that book, God portrays himself as a faithful husband of a prostitute wife (who represents the nation of Israel when she was being unfaithful to the covenant God had made with her). But in the book of Hosea God doesn’t abandon his spouse, even when she prostitutes herself by worshipping foreign gods (as God does not abandon us even in our sin). God promises here to bring his unfaithful bride back to himself. He says, "I will espouse you to me forever; I will espouse you in right and in justice, in love and in mercy; I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall know the Lord."

Thus it shouldn’t surprise us that Jesus, the divine Son of God, speaks of his relationship to his people using this same type of analogy, calling himself the bridegroom and implying that his Church is his bride. Then in the text Jesus says this to his questioners: "No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined. Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins." We’ve all heard the expression, "Expand your mind." Well, that’s really what Jesus is saying here. He’s saying, "Friends, if you want to understand what I just said to you about my being the bridegroom, and if you want to understand the fullness of my Gospel message, then you’ve got to move beyond your Old Testament categories. You’ve got to ‘expand your mind.’ You’ve got to allow yourselves to be touched by the Holy Spirit so that you will be open to the fullness of God’s truth. Right now your minds are like old wineskins; they can’t accept the ‘new wine’ of my teaching. But the Holy Spirit can transform your minds to become like new wineskins, and then you will be able to accept what I say."

"Fr. Ray, this sounds awfully deep and theoretical." Well, perhaps it is, but--believe me--the application to our lives is very, very practical. What I just shared with you is one example of how Jesus challenged some of the beliefs of the prevailing religion of his day. We are disciples of Jesus Christ in the year 2000, which means that we are to strive to imitate our master, to follow his example. Thus we are called upon to do what that 12-year-old did in her poem: with the truth of the Gospel, we are supposed to challenge some of the beliefs contained in the prevailing religion of our day--which is not Judaism, it’s SECULARISM! Secularism is a system of beliefs in which God is considered irrelevant: "Man is the measure of all things." "Technology without God-given morality can solve all our problems." "Religion is a private matter." "There are no moral absolutes; everything is relative." Those, my brothers and sisters, are some of the tenets of Secularism. Now please do not misunderstand—very few men and women would actually call themselves Secularists. But many people (even some who call themselves Catholic) do embrace the ideas of secularism and live by them. Which means that even though they may have Baptism certificates, they actually practice the religion of Secularism. Praise God, that little twelve-year-old girl realizes that this is a very destructive religion! She may not express it in precisely the terms that I have, but she understands that leaving God and his moral law out of our schools and out of public life is having disastrous consequences. And the poor girl is worried that she herself might become one of these consequences!--"So now, oh Lord, this plea I make: Should I be shot in school, my soul please take."