Furthermore…

We didn’t meet last week to make room for Christmas in the members’ lives. Today the Gospel reading was the account of St. Joseph and Mary bringing Baby Jesus to the Temple, the “Presentation.” The discussion got off on a tangent when one member asserted that Jewish customs given by God such as the observance of the Passover were eliminated by Christianity, which amounts to turning away from God’s instructions on how we are to live properly. I was mindful to some of the teachings of Dr. Scott Hahn about how the Mass embodies to a great extent Jewish observances, including the Passover meal, and how trappings of Catholicism trace in many instances to Jewish roots, and so I urged the member making the assertion to study the matter further.