Built to Last

Remembering our citizenship is in the City of God

12/06/2018

Matthew 7:21, 24-27 Jesus said to his disciples: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. "Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house.  And it collapsed and was completely ruined."

Today I would like to talk to you about two cities: one, the city of man, and the other, the city of God. Now, I am not the first to compare and contrast these two cities. St. Augustine already did that much more masterfully in his classic book, The City of God written in 426. Maybe this humble little homily will inspire you to read that blessed book.

The first city, the city of man, is often built along waterways, ocean-fronts or rivers. You may have noticed that Fort Smith lies along the Arkansas River. In fact, two great modern cities were built on swamps: Washington, D.C. and Mexico City. Washington, D.C. has a political reputation for being called “the swamp” because it was built on a tidal basin surrounded by three rivers: the Potomac, the Anacostia, and Tiber Creek. The phrase “to drain the swamp” has the implication of attempting to construct the city on new and different foundations, more solid ones.

Another great modern city that sits on a swamp, actually a lake, is Mexico City. The original settlers, an indigenous people called “the Mexicas” believed in an ancient prophesy telling them where to build their capital city. The sign was an eagle, eating a snake, while perched atop a cactus. They saw that sign in the middle of Lake Texcoco, and they hauled in untold loads of dirt to fill in the lake, and built their capital there. That ancient prophetic image stands in the middle of the modern Mexican flag: an eagle, eating a snake, perched on a cactus. The city of man, therefore, is built along waterways, and sometimes even erected on a swamp.

The second city is the city of God, or the Church, and it is built on rock. When Jesus announced his plans to build his kingdom in Matthew 16, do you remember what he said it would be built on? He turned to St. Peter and declared: “And so I say to you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the nether world will not prevail against it.” That is, Jesus, the divine city planner, would build his city on the person of St. Peter and the rock of his faith. An ancient adage in the Church teaches: “ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia,” which is Latin and means “where there is Peter, there is the Church” because he is the rock on which it is built. In the gospel today, when Jesus speaks of building a house on rock, he is using another image – “house” rather than “kingdom/city” – but in order to convey the same message, namely, the foundation should be the rock of faith, not the waterways and swamps of the city of man. That is the city that will last because of what it is built on, namely, rock.

My friends, we all take pride in our hometowns and our native city, whether it is Fort Smith or Fayetteville, or Faridabad (a city in India where my family lives). But do we take as much pride in the city of God, the Church? Put differently, how much of our time, treasure, and talent do we spend in building one city or the other? It used to be that the tallest structure in a city was the steeples of churches, but now it’s skyscrapers, which says something about which city we take more pride in. I am often in awe of the original Catholics who settled in Fort Smith and built this magnificent church in 1901. I often ask myself: How did they do that, lacking all the modern construction tools, equipment, and know-how? I think the simple answer is: they were far more interested in building the city of God than the city of man. They had an innate sense that modern human cities tend to be built on waterways, while the city of God, the Church, has been set solidly on rock, the person of St. Peter and his profession of faith. And it was pretty clear which one would last and which one would eventually collapse.

A friend of mine who is studying at the University of Notre Dame said that most civilizations have a four-hundred year life cycle, just like human beings have a life cycle (a life expectancy), so do human civilizations, which is four-hundred years. The first two hundred years they grow and expand, conquering other peoples and places, and transplanting their own traditions, like planting their flags on foreign lands. The second two hundred years, however, they experience decline and eventually extinction. That is the fate of the city of man because it is not built on the rock of faith, but on the watery ways of this world.

While we love our human cities, and support them, and enjoy them, let us not forget the city of God, of which we are also citizens. The life cycle of a city has everything to do with its foundations: whether it is built on water or on rock, whether it stands on fate or on faith.

Praised be Jesus Christ!