“You are God’s building.” (1 Cor 3:9)
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Dedication of the
Lateran Basilica in Rome. This is the
cathedral of Rome where the Pope is the bishop of Rome and thus it is the
cathedral of the Universal Church. We
celebrate this feast to remind us that we are one, holy, Catholic, and
apostolic Church in communion with our Holy Father as we rejoice over the
dedication of our mother church in Rome.
This feast also serves as a reminder that we are the Church. It is not a building or a far away building
in Rome, but the Church is made up of living stones, the people of God, who in
communion with Christ and with those he has entrusted with the care of his
flock are called to build up the Kingdom of God here on earth.
We are reminded that as a Church we are called to build upon
the foundation that Our Savior left for us.
He founded the Church and the apostles and all who came after built on
that foundation. Here in this particular
church that was founded 60 years ago, we continue to build upon the foundation
left by the founders of this great parish community. The works that they did back then laid the
framework for what we are doing today as a parish. Obviously, we gather together for Mass in
this beautiful church that our founders labored to build, and we enjoy the
fruits of their labor, but what are we leaving for future generations?
Because we are the living Church, we never stop in building
up the kingdom of God. There are so many
of your brothers and sisters here in this parish who labor in God’s vineyard
and perform great acts of charity without anyone even noticing. Obviously, in the coming week, we will see
many people work during our parish carnival, but there will be many who will be
working far from view whose jobs are no less important: those who stay behind at night to pick up
trash, those who wake up early to buy the food, those who perform tiny acts of
charity to help these days go by smoother.
But beyond the carnival, in the day-to-day life of this parish, so many
wonderful people build up the kingdom with only their Heavenly Father noticing. We have those who help the poor in our food
pantry. We have an army of people who
visit the sick and bring the love that we share in this church on Sundays into
people’s homes. We have ladies that
quietly clean our altar cloths and the priests’ vestments. We have men who without prompting may fix
something that is broken. After all this
is your parish and you are the Church.
In short, we are called to reflect this magnificent temple
where God resides. When I was a child,
whenever we would go to Mass on Sunday, it was never lost on me that this was
God’s house and this is where God lived.
But as a Church, we cannot confine ourselves to these walls. This is something that our Holy Father has
repeated time and again. If as a Church
we are truly called to reflect this temple where God dwells, then we must be living
temples of God’s presence out there in the world. The question and the challenge I leave with
you this day as we celebrate what it means to be part of the Church is this: “What
am I doing to contribute to the work of our beloved Church?”
