Note: On Tuesdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Back in the dark ages, I took a college course titled “Individual and the Family.” It must have been required for one of my majors, because I surely wouldn’t have taken it otherwise.
The only thing I remember from that class is the story of the pot roast. A woman, newlywed, made a pot roast. Her 
husband asked why she cut it in half and put it into pans to roast. She said because that’s how her mother did it. They asked her mother why she made pot roast that way; she said because her mother did it that way.
When they asked her why she did it, she laughed and said, “Because I didn’t have any pans big enough to cook the whole roast.”
There’s tradition, and then there’s tradition. There’s worship and then there’s habit. Sitting in the same pew every week may be an individual or family tradition. Giving the evil eye to someone who gets there earlier than you one Sunday and sits in your “place” surely is not something that makes the Lord happy.
Sending your children and grandchildren to a particular high school or college may be a family tradition. Gnashing your teeth and considering the young person a failure if he or she doesn’t get accepted surely is not something that makes the Lord happy.
Volunteering in a particular ministry because that’s what everyone in your neighborhood or social circle does may be tradition. Helping out grudgingly at a food pantry when you’d rather be saying a rosary in front of an abortion clinic almost certainly grieves the Lord.
You see, when it comes to faith, doing something just because you’ve always done it or everyone you know has always done it sets aside the commandment of God—love Him with all your heart, soul, and being—in favor of the false god of tradition. Tradition can be beautiful and comfort and sustain us when we follow it for the right reasons. When we don’t, we are as foolish and slavish to tradition as the women who cut the pot roast in half for no reason other than tradition.
