There is a perennial temptation in human affairs to glorify the “good old days.” You see it in today’s politics where some idealized, imagined past will be recovered if you only follow my program. Closer examination of that past shows it had just as many problems as we are currently having. St. Luke glorifies the early days of the Church in the Acts of the Apostles as a time when every got along and did the right. However, when you read the letters of St. Paul you can recognize that even the first Christians struggled. The Apostle wrote to Timothy: It is my wish, then, that in every place the [people] should pray, lifting up holy hands, without anger or argument. The reason he wished it was because anger and argument were present in the community. The challenge from St. Paul, then, is that we find a way to pray together where even our disagreements don’t become sources of conflict or division.
