Stop moving, be rooted – Tuesday, 23rd week in ordinary time- St Paul’s letter to the Colossians  2:6-15 ( these reflections make more sense if your read the scripture before you embark on the explanation)

In 2003, when Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vinci code’ hit the book stores, a number of Catholics were either perturbed or intrigued by the contents of the book.  A friend even thrust it in my hand like he had found the ‘Holy Grail’. Was the Church ‘hiding’ events in history and were there those dark corners in the Church that the Church did not want us to know? Interestingly there were many others that were not ‘disturbed’ at all; I for one found it an interesting piece of fiction and that’s where I placed the book once I was done with it. No self-respecting library would place Da Vinci’s figment of imagination beside Shakespeare, even though it may be a great page turner!

It’s time Christians stop jumping up and down each time a new fad comes along. The dark corners of the Church exist in our minds and not in reality especially if we paid little attention to Catechism class or a Sunday homily; which we may have duly dismissed on merely seeing a preacher we don’t like.

Dan Brown, as do many new fad-clad beliefs, follows a simple but effective way of fooling people. You tell a series of ‘unknown truths’ which the wide eyed believer will fire up the internet to ‘Google’ (our newest ‘Gospel truth’ for many of us) and then we are told that one lie. So this is how it works; tell an ‘unknown truth’ (unknown more because you never paid attention to Catechism), followed by several such ‘fascinating unknown truths’, and then finally tell a big fat lie.

The results are astounding. Lo and behold you have a lot of new found ‘believers’ who are ready to drop their Christian faith for the ‘truth’ they now have discovered! The warnings of Christ stand ever before us; build your house on solid rock; make a firm foundation on solid stone.