Dancing Around the Altar of . . .

On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of hearing Father Robert Barron speak about the New Evangelization.  It is the best presentation that I had heard on this topic.  He began by recognizing that this is a current focus of the Church.  Father Barron is the creator of the Catholicism series released in fall 2011.  He has the talent to bring the highly theological into lay-mans terms.  He presented much, good content in this talk -too much to talk about here.

One of my take away ideas came from the time when Elijah, “the only surviving prophet of the Lord”[i] challenged the 450 prophets of Baal to have their gods light a fire on an altar. Fr. Barron recalled the scene, describing how the 450 prophets called on their gods to light the altar with fire.  They called from morning to Noon saying, “answer us Baal!” But there was no sound and no one answering. Then they hopped around the altar they had prepared.[ii] 

After continued hopping and calling on their gods and eventually slashing themselves, there wasn’t an answer.  Then Elijah built an altar with twelve stones, each representing a tribe.  He had the altar drenched three times until water flowed around the altar and into the trench around it.  He called on God, saying “Answer me Lord that this people may know that you, Lord are God and that you have brought them back to these senses.”  And the fire consumed the altar, even the water in the trenches.  And all of the people repented and said “the Lord is God”.

Father Barron’s point is that we have our own altars today.  There are things that we dance around all of the time.  For me I spend time each day “dancing around the altar of food”.  For others it can be alcohol or drugs, pornography, vanity, greed, sex, etc.

His point is that rather than follow the Lord in all that we do, as fragile human beings, we find another altar around which to dance and call out and slash our arms in the pursuit of earthly possessions or activities that bring us fame.  Yet all we need to do is to call out to our almighty, loving Lord and to pursue his plan for us, and ask for help to conform our will to His.

In our modern time, it is difficult for many to even think about obeying God.  We have been brought up to grasp and pursue material things, fame, success and money.  These are our altars.  Yet our great and mighty triune God is capable of some much more than we can imagine, if we dance around His altar and call upon Him as our Lord.

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[i] 1 Kings 18:22

[ii] 1 Kings 18:26