Hallowed Halls

Meeting our Maker in the church

12/29/2021

Luke 2:22-35 When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, the parents of Jesus took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, just as it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord, and to offer the sacrifice of a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons, in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord. Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord. He came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform the custom of the law in regard to him, he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying: “Lord, now let your servant go in peace; your word has been fulfilled: my own eyes have seen the salvation which you prepared in the sight of every people, a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.” The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

I have been involved in a lot of construction projects in my 25 years as a priest. We renovated the stunning interior of St. Edward’s Church in Little Rock. We built the beautiful parish hall at St. Raphael in Springdale. We added the DeBriyn Center gymnasium and classrooms at St. Joseph’s in Fayetteville. And we saved St. Anne’s Convent in honor of the Sisters of Mercy here at Immaculate Conception in Fort Smith. I have learned that different projects garner different levels of support from parishioners. For example, about one third of the people will contribute to building a parish center or hall, about two thirds will donate to build a school, but almost all the people will give when it comes to constructing a church. Why? Well, because sooner or later in the course of our life, we all have to walk into a church: either as a baby to be baptized, or as a corpse in a coffin to be carried to our final resting place.

I like to say that in a church, we are hatched, matched and dispatched. Or, as St. Paul put it more poetically in Acts 17:28, “In him we live and move and have our being.” When we build a church, we literally put our money where our mouth is, because within these hallowed halls we experience life and death, love and laughter, joys and sorrows, happiness and holiness, earth and heaven. In short, a church is where we find the center and source of our faith, our encounter with the Eternal one, where we meet our Maker.

In the gospel today from Luke 2:22-35, Mary and Joseph take the Baby Jesus to the Temple, the center and source of Jewish faith life. They present Jesus to God and consecrate him to God because he is their firstborn Son. By the way, the term “firstborn” in this case does not suggest that Mary and Joseph had other children after Jesus. Firstborn refers to a privilege and a blessing, not to a spot in a sequence of siblings. Remember Jacob and Esau, the sons of Isaac. Esau was firstborn in the order of birth, but Jacob received the blessing of the firstborn son, a double portion of the father’s inheritance. Be careful not to confuse the two senses of the term “firstborn son.”

In the Temple the Holy Family meets Simeon who sees the Savior with his own eyes and now feels ready to die; his life is complete. He prophesies that Mary’s heart would be pierced by a sword, meaning that as her Son would suffer to save the world, she, too, would participate in that suffering. In other words, in the Jerusalem Temple, the Holy Family shared joys and sorrows, life and death, happiness and holiness, earth and heaven. And what did they do in response? They made a donation: they offered “the sacrifice of a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons” because they were a poor family. They put their money where their mouth is to support the Temple, the center and source of their faith life.

December 29 is the feast of St. Thomas Becket, the holy archbishop of Canterbury. If you could like to read a moving account of his martyrdom on Dec. 29, 1170, I highly recommend T. S. Eliot’s play called “Murder in the Cathedral.” In the middle of the play is the homily that Archbishop Becket delivers on Christmas Day, 1170, four days before his murder in the same cathedral. In that homily, he asks rhetorically: “Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ?” He is referring the feast of St. Stephen on December 26th. He answers his own question: “By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and Passion of our Lord; so, also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs.”

In other words, in church we celebrate the death of martyrs like St. Stephen, which was also his birth into eternal life in heaven. In church, at the Mass, in the holy feast days, we touch the center and source of our faith, we begin to understand why we have been put on this planet, which is ultimately to encounter the Eternal One, and to live and die for Him. Four days after delivering that sermon, four assassins hired by King Henry II burst into Canterbury Cathedral and brutally murdered the archbishop. The holy archbishop bore witness that the church is where we live and die in the Lord.

As we celebrate the feast of another holy martyr who gave his life for the Baby born in Bethlehem, especially one who died in the church, we should ask ourselves what we come to church seeking. Whatever else you came looking for here, you will find the center and source of your faith life. Within these hallowed halls, you are hatched, matched and dispatched.

Praised be Jesus Christ!