This being Sunday....

At 7:30 AM, on channel 66.1, the Bible-punchers channel on my air-signal antenna, there's a Catholic Mass for half an hour, from somewhere in Texas, via Toronto.
I'm Catholic, in the sense that the church I currently do not attend is Catholic, so I probably shouldn't criticize them. But as I'm watching & listening to all the usual repetitive mumbo-jumbo, I suddenly found myself thinking of something found in St. Matthew, in the Eastern Orthodox version of the Bible, which they call 'The Peshitta'. 

In there, in St. Matthew Chapter 6, beginning at verse 5, it says: "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who like to pray, standing in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you that they have already received their reward.
But as for you, when you pray, enter into your inner chamber and lock your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret shall himself reward you openly.
And when you pray, do not repeat your words like the pagans, for they think that because of much talking they will be heard. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need, before you ask him...

Now, let me go even further back into history, into the Ancient Egyptian 'Book of the Dead' about 1,300 BC, officially known as 'The Papyrus of Ani' and in which we find this:- "The house of God what it hates is much speaking. Pray thou with a loving heart the petitions of which all are in secret. He will do thy business, he will hear that which thou sayest and will accept thine offerings."

That last paragraph is an old English transliteration done in the 1890s by Sir E.A. Wallis Budge, former curator of the Egyptian Antiquities section of the British Museum. It shows a definite similarity of concept to that passage found in St. Matthew, Chapter 6, above. I leave it to you to decide if those early Christians simply looked at the religion of Egypt, and said to themselves, "If we change a few names, turn all the minor gods & goddesses into Saints, and change sun worship to spiritual worship of one God, we won't be offering something that isn't familiar already - if it works, let's not fix it - and theirs has worked for thousands of years already!"

Is this too cynical? There's a big difference between spirituality and religion.  Spirituality connects us to spirits. Religion connects us to a hierarchy concerned with power, control, and money. Dominus vobiscum!