This weekend we celebrate—throughout the Church universal—the
Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica. One of the four major basilicas of the City
of Rome, the Basilica of St. John Lateran is actually the main cathedral of the
pope. Usually when we see the pope on
television he is in the Vatican or celebrating Mass in St. Peters Basilica (also
one of the four major basilicas). But
from as far back as the 4th century the Basilica of St. John Lateran, not St.
Peter’s, has been the pope’s cathedral.
Yet what we celebrate this weekend in the Church is not the
wood, stone, marble and stained glass that constitutes that Roman architectural
wonder, as much as the magnificent and awesome reality that it symbolizes: the
temple of the living God that is the Body of Christ, the Church. As St. Paul emphatically reminds us this
weekend:
Do you not know that
you are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit
of God dwells in you?
—1 Corinthians 3:16
In fact, all of our readings for this weekend are focused
upon the Church as the temple and the dwelling place of God. All of our readings lead us to reflect deeply
upon our identity and mission as the Church Christ founded.
But what do we believe about the Church? If you asked 10 separate people what they
understand about the Church, it is possible that you could get as many
answers. Some might say the Church is,
for them, a family of faith; others might answer that the Church is the place
where we worship God. The Church might
be acknowledged as the gathering of believers united in one faith and guided by
the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Certainly
we profess each and every week that the Church is one, holy, catholic and
apostolic.
Yet there is one notion of the Church that Pope Francis has
systematically eliminated from the equation.
Over and over again he has insisted that the Church cannot be
self-referential, bent on its own self-preservation. However we understand the Church and our own
experience of parish life, we cannot remain focused on the mere maintenance of
the structures and institutions closed in on themselves. The Church, Pope Francis insists, must strive
to move outward to those on the periphery and on the margins. The Church is necessarily evangelical.
This is nothing new.
Evangelical faith—faith which seeks to announce the Good News of Jesus
Christ to all the world in word and deed—is rooted in the New Testament and evidenced
down through the centuries in the lives of the saints and in the missionary
zeal of those who took Christ’s call seriously.
The Church exists to evangelize, to transform the world and set the
hearts of all on fire. Yet now more than
ever we need to revive that missionary zeal and allow the power of the Holy
Spirit who dwells in us to lead us out of our comfort zone and into a world
desperately in need of healing and new life.
There is a powerful image of what God desires and intends
for His Church in the First Reading this weekend from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel.
The prophet has a vision of the temple, and flowing from the threshold
of the temple was a river that could not
be contained within. The angel of God,
who has brought him to the temple, says to him:
“This water flows
into the eastern district down upon the Arabah, and empties into the sea, the
salt waters, which it makes fresh.
Wherever the river flows, every sort of living creature that can
multiply shall live, and there shall be abundant fish, for wherever this water
comes the sea shall be made fresh.”
—Ezekiel 47: 8-10
The angel continues to declare that fruit trees will grow on
the banks of the river, providing food, and that their leaves will be a
medicine for healing.
This vision of Ezekiel is remarkable and striking because it
is completely different from the way
we experience the natural world. When a
river flows into the sea, at the very place where the mouth of the river
empties into the ocean, the water is quite brackish. The vast expanse of the salt water overflows back
into that river, and even though the water may be fresh and clear upstream, it
is filled with sediment and salt at the place where it begins to empty
out.
Not so in the vision of Ezekiel. The prophet envisions a river that is so
remarkably fresh and powerfully pure that it is able to turn the entire ocean itself
into fresh water! This is a beautiful and striking image of the
power of God in the sacraments and the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of
the Church, which is able to transform all that is bitter and stagnant and to
heal the brokenness and sickness that comes to us from sin.
The lives of so many people in the world, many who have not
yet encountered the God of mercy, forgiveness and love, are filled with sorrow,
disappointment and shame. The message of
salvation and the encounter with Jesus Christ through His Body, the Church, has
the power to bring refreshment, renewal and new life. How awesome is the power of God in and
through His Church!
Yet if we are honest we can admit that, perhaps too often,
this is not how the world experiences the Church. Is it
not true that, at times, the bitterness and the brokenness of the world, along
with the reality of sin, flow back from the sea and into the Church? Is it not the case that the family of God,
and our own individual lives, can become tainted with the briny bitterness of
sin?
Far from denying this reality, the Second Vatican Council
clearly teaches that the Church is “at the same time holy and always in need of being purified” (Lumen Gentium, #8). She is
holy because she is one and united to Jesus Christ, Her Divine Bridegroom. The Church is the holy, spotless Bride of
Christ. Yet, in Her individual members,
she experiences the bitterness of sin and is thus, “always in need of being purified.” She needs to be cleansed, made pure and
constantly renewed in every age. That
can, and should, happen in many different ways.
Jesus teaches us one particular and effective way in the Gospel this
weekend.
St.
John recalls how Jesus went into the temple and found those selling oxen, sheep
and doves; He saw moneychangers making a business out of the worship of
God. Making a whip out of cords, He
drove them all out of the temple: the moneychangers, as well as the
animals! The Fathers of the Church teach
us that Christ is cleansing the temple of more than injustice and sin. He is clearing it out and putting an end to
all animal sacrifice so that He might institute one single and eternal
sacrifice: the sacrifice of Himself.
This one sacrifice is the one that will ultimately cleanse and purify
even the Church, from its beginning until the end of time.
The
Church requires a purging and purification that comes through scourging, but
not our scourging. The Church is made
holy and perfect through the shedding of blood and total sacrifice, but not our
blood and not our sacrifice. Jesus
Christ will ultimately allow Himself to be scourged and afflicted that we may
be healed (see Isaiah 53:5), and He will become the sacrifice that brings the
forgiveness that each and every one of us longs for and desires. Here, then, is the source of the river that
Ezekiel saw flowing from the temple and into the sea, which it makes
fresh. Jesus Christ is the source of the
healing and the power that purifies the Church and, in turn, transforms the
world we live in.
When we
seek out the Lord for the forgiveness of our sins in the Sacrament of
Reconciliation that He instituted for that very purpose, we are given a new
beginning and we hear those life-giving words of Christ: “I absolve you from your sins.” This new life comes to us from the cross and
the sacrifice of God’s only begotten Son.
We are
renewed and made whole in the Holy Eucharist only because Christ, with great
love, stretched out His arms on the altar of the cross and proclaimed:
This is my Body,
broken for you.
This is my blood,
shed in love for you.
Take, receive, and
live in me; let me live in you.
A Church that is not purified, one that is as secular as the
world around it, is useless.
But a purified Church that is immersed in the life of Christ
flowing like a river from the cross, that is the Church healed and made ready to
bring God’s medicine to the brokenness of the world we live in. That is the Church Christ desires, and the
Church all of us long to be a part of.
Receiving Christ here in the Most Holy Eucharist, immersed
in the love of Christ crucified and purified completely in Him, may we truly
become holy, cleansed and ready to go wherever He pleases. May we be that river, flowing from the temple
and out into the world around us, bringing healing, refreshment and hope to all
who long to see the face of God.
