Building the Dome, Meeting the Saints

I’m excited that the formal beginning of our ministry together will be joined to our celebration of the feast of All Saints this coming Sunday. As many of you know, All Saints' is one of the principal feasts of the church year, a day adorned with beautiful prayers and hymns.  At its heart, the feast celebrates the transforming power of Christ’s resurrection, revealed in the lives of our brothers and sisters across time and space, “the lights of the world in their generations.” 

It’s notable that a feast so centered on the church’s life began with the consecration of one particular church building, Saint Mary and the Martyrs in Rome, consecrated for Christian worship in 609.  You probably know this particular church much better by its pagan name, the Pantheon.  If you have been to Rome, you may have been inside it to catch a glimpse of its glorious dome, which has served as a model for many more buildings of its kind, including the Jefferson Memorial in our own backyard.

When the Pantheon was completed by the Roman emperor Hadrian in the second century, its dome was twice as big as any that had ever been built before, still the largest masonry dome ever constructed.  It was a monument to the Roman genius for engineering, intended to rival the great pyramids.  The wide expanse echoed the vault of the heavens, appropriate for its dedication to all the gods of Rome.

Ponder: "a proper distance is a condition for communion"

"To refuse this silence filled with confident awe and adoration is to refuse God the freedom to capture us by His love and His presence. Sacred silence is therefore the place where we can encounter God, because we come to Him with the proper attitude of a human being who trembles and stands at a distance while hoping confidently. We priests must relearn the filial fear of God and the sacral character of our relations with Him. We must relearn to tremble with astonishment before the Holiness of God and the unprecedented grace of our priesthood.

Silence teaches us a major rule of the spiritual life: familiarity does not foster intimacy; on the contrary, a proper distance is a condition for communion. It is by way of adoration that humanity walks toward love. Sacred silence opens the way to mystical silence, full of loving intimacy. Under the yoke of secular reason, we have forgotten that the sacred and worship are the only entrances to the spiritual life. Therefore I do not hesitate to declare that sacred silence is a cardinal law of all liturgical celebration."

Robert Cardinal Sarah, “CardinalRobert Sarah on the ‘Strength of Silence’ and the Dictatorship of Noise.” The Catholic World Report. 3 Oct 2016.

I believe in the Holy Church

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

I Peter 2:9

The French author Georges  Bernanos published a few decades ago one of the more interesting sermons I have ever read.  What made it so interesting is that he wrote it from the perspective of an agnostic, an outsider to the Church.  If we let a unbeliever into one of our pulpits for twenty minutes on a Sunday morning, what exactly would he or she have to tell us about ourselves and the faith we claim to profess?  I will read you just a small portion of that sermon:

Need I remind you that God came in Person to the Jewish people.  They saw Him.  They heard Him.  Their hands touched Him.  They asked for signs; he gave them those signs.  He healed the sick and raised the dead.  Then he ascended once again to the Heavens.  When we seek Him now, in this world, it is you we find, and only you.  Oh, I respect the Church—but the history of the Church herself, after all, does not surrender its secret to the first-comer…It is you, Christians, who participate in divinity, as your liturgy proclaims; it is you ‘divine men’ who ever since His Ascension have been His representatives on earth.  Well, you must admit that one would hardly know it at first glance.[1]