500th Anniversary of the Reformation
“Always Reforming”
On Sunday we celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. I shared a couple of family stories about some rather hostile words and actions between some of my relatives. Catholics and Protestants sometimes spoke very unkind words to each other, and sometimes they didn’t speak to each other at all. My mother’s paternal grandmother would have nothing to do with her grandchildren, for example, because they were not raised by two Catholic parents. On my father’s side of the family, there were Catholics who converted to Pentecostals and then told the Catholics they were going to hell.
The 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation is today, as it began on October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther, the German priest and professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, wrote a letter to the Archbishop in an attempt to stand up to the unjust teachings and practices of the Church. Because of the hostility between Catholics and Protestants over the ages, including in my own family, I “celebrated” the Reformation with some sadness.
I also shared an encounter I had with a Catholic priest by the name of Father Richard Hopkins, a distant cousin on my mother’s paternal side of the family—the side where my great-grandmother would have nothing to do with my mother and her two brothers. Father Richard reached out to me in the 1990’s and brought healing to my family. He died this past August at the age of 98. I was reminded this past week as I read his obituary of the Church’s need to always be reforming, for the Church always has more to learn in terms of loving others with God’s unconditional and eternal love. Father Richard was a wonderful example of that for me.
I am wondering how I might be better at loving others. I hope you are wondering the same!
Aloha nui!
Kahu Alan Akana
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“A Message from Kahu Alan Akana” is provided most weeks by the Kahu (Pastor) of Koloa Union Church, a congregation of the United Church of Christ (UCC), a member of the Kauai Association and Hawaii Conference.
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