21 August 2020 - Friday of the 20th week in Ordinary Time - Ezekiel 37:1-14

     We have been hearing readings from the prophet Ezekiel in our daily masses these last couple of weeks, readings that brought us a lot of vivid images.  However, I think the image of the bones coming to life in today’s reading is one of the most famous passages from Ezekiel.  How unforgettable is this image of a valley of dry bones coming to life after hearing the word of God. It does not exactly tell the timeframe of when this passage took place, but biblical scholars believe it took place about a year after the Babylonian exile.  The image of the bones coming to life is a message of new life and hope that the people in exile needed to hear.  Their city, their Temple, their society had suffered ruin and destruction.  They were now separated from their homeland and all that was important to them.  But, in the midst of their present harsh reality, there was new life ahead of them.  God did not abandone them.     

       In the early 20th century, three of the four popes were named Pius, so to me, it is difficult separating them and telling them apart.  Today, we celebrate the first of those popes named Pius in the 20th century - Pope Pius X. Installed as pope in 1904, and serving right after the influential Pope Leo XIII, Pius X served as pope for 11 years. I found it interesting that as a young priest, he helped his people serving a terrible cholera epidemic that spread through northern Italy in the 1870s - it is so interesting how the saints we celebrate relate to what we are going through in our own lives. He took as his motto as pope: To restore all things in Christ.  One of his important reforms along those lines was to encourage the frequent reception of holy communion, something that had gone of favor in the Church at the time.  To do that, he lowered the age of reception of first communion to the age of seven, seen as the age a child could reason between right and wrong and could understand the sacrament he was receiving.  He also started an important reform of canon law and the reform of Church music, including the revival of Gregorian chant. He also worked to combat the philosophies of modernism and relativism, with relativism being something that pervasive now in our own day.

       Every era needs renewal.  Every era has its own challenges and obstacles.  May we see hope and inspiration today in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel and in the life of Pope Pius X.