SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
SOLEMNITY OF THE DEDICATION OF THE CHURCH
11 FEBRUARY 2024
Physical
buildings have long been important to the descendants of Abraham. King Solomon built the first temple after the
death of his father, David. Our first reading
describes the dedication of that temple.
As part of the ceremony, Solomon placed the ark of the covenant in the
Holy of Holies. The ark contained the
two tablets of the Law given to Moses at Mount Sinai. So many sheep and oxen were sacrificed that
they could not be counted. In the newly
built temple, animal sacrifices would occur on the altar in front of the Holy
of Holies. People would bring animals
valuable to them to be slaughtered and burned on the altar. As the smoke of the holocaust went into the
sky, believers would ask God to accept the animal sacrifice as a sign of their
desire to be in union with God.
When Bishop
Rhoades dedicated our new church seven years ago, no one brought oxen or sheep
to be sacrificed. That would have been a
mess! Instead, those who gathered for
the dedication brought their individual sacrifices. They had sacrificed a first and generous
portion of their treasure for the building of this beautiful structure. When Solomon dedicated his temple, the clouds
of incense were so intense that he knew that the Lord was present. The Lord remains present in our church in the
Tabernacle and in the Sacramental life of the Church. Whenever we celebrate the Eucharist in this
church, the Lord’s sacrificial death on the cross out of love for us is made
present in our liturgical remembering.
Today’s
Gospel takes place in another space sacred to pagans. Jesus and his disciples are standing in front
of a shrine dedicated to the pagan god, Pan.
The shrine is cut into a massive rock face. It is here that Simon Peter answers Jesus’s
question about his identity. Peter does
not make a good guess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. He has received divine inspiration. In response, Jesus changes Simon’s name to Peter,
which means “rock.” It will be on the
rock of Saint Peter’s profession of faith that Jesus will build his
Church. No matter how often Peter and
his successors or other members of his Church may fail and become stumbling
blocks, Jesus promises that his Church will endure.
We are the
Church gathered to celebrate the anniversary of dedication of our physical
church today. Saint Paul reminds us that
we are God’s building. We are that
spiritual temple, not built from physical stones. We were incorporated into God’s living temple
when we were baptized. We not only give
thanks to God for our beautiful physical church. We give thanks to God for forming us on the
foundation of Jesus Christ and breathing his Spirit within us.
But we also
know that we have not always lived our lives as a temple of the Holy
Spirit. Like so many of Peter’s
successors, we have failed to conform ourselves completely to Christ. In our actions and in how we have failed to
act, we have not behaved as the temple of the Holy Spirit. That is why this Season of Lent is so
important. On Wednesday, we will be
marked with the ashes that remind us that we will return to dust. In the light of the reality of our death, we
commit ourselves to fasting, prayer, and almsgiving as a way of admitting our
sins and allowing the mercy of God to build us up again. For our Catechumens, these forty days will be
a time of Purification and Enlightenment, a time for their final preparation
for the Sacraments of Initiation.
Please read
the information in the bulletin and online about taking advantage of the Season
of Lent. As God’s living temple in this
physical temple, we will allow the Lord to continue to form us into his Body,
the Temple that replaced the temples of ancient Israel.
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