Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time
October 23, 2005


What is the first thing you notice when you enter a church? (aka: What have you learned from a church building/architecture?)

I witnessed a wedding last weekend at the New Cathedral. It was the first time I had celebrated mass there since they moved the main altar back to its original placement in the sanctuary. The main altar lies beneath a towering baldichino supported by 14 marble columns – 7 on each side, taken from marble from the seven continents of our world. Worked into the center of the dome hovering above the top of the baldichino are the words (in Latin): “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Just below that are figures of the 12 apostles, positioned on all the points on the compass, symbolically ready to do just that. As if to ask and answer the questions: Where, then, comes the mandate to teach and baptize? From the sacrifice of the mass! Where, then, comes the strength to live out that command? From our experience of the Eucharist! Where, then, comes the food to sustain us in that never ending task of loving the world into the kingdom Jesus sent us to transform? From the Body and Blood of the Eucharist itself! There, worked into stone and space, marble and granite and mosaic, comes the great teaching: “At the table of the Eucharist, our greatest treasure, begins and ends our experience of loving God and loving neighbor.”

Everything about the New Cathedral architecture screams that message to us. The most important treasure of the church, its greatest gift and greatest source of strength – happens beneath that baldichino, happens upon the altar that sits there, surrounded by the world and sent back into the world as gift and as challenge. Our going to God and God’s coming to us, passes through that altar which is Jesus. Our loving of God and our loving of neighbor finds its source and summit at the table of love, the banquet God has prepared for us.

But here is a little known tidbit about that mighty work of praise in granite and stone. There is an error in the mosaics that appear under the baldichino. And it is an intentional one. In the Latin phrase from the book of Isaiah: The Lord laid upon him the iniquity of us all, –which originally referred to the suffering servant of Isaiah, now, by extension refers to Jesus – they misspelled the word: “All”. And it was intentionally done to remind us, to make sure we wouldn’t get too complacent. There, at the holiest place in that church, they worked into the mosaic an error – to teach us that it is only by grace that we are worthy of such a gift, only by God’s initiative are we able to love him with all our hearts, minds and souls. No matter how well we try to love God with heart and mind and soul, we will fall short. And it is okay. Because we know even that ‘skill’, even that ability to love is a grace which we need to be open to receive again and again and again. And where does that happen? You guess it – the Eucharist.

For those of you who have attended mass at St. Ann parish, my other full time job, the depiction of that truth is no less subtle. When you enter the church, the entire back wall of the sanctuary is made of stained glass and painted wood. There, worked into the wood and the stained glass, is an elegant cross. The cross, appearing visually from where the altar used to be, spreads its arms out across the entire sanctuary, and if it could, across the entire church, as if to embrace all our attempts to love within its arms. And it spreads itself from horizon to horizon as if to say that our love, too, must embrace in concrete and practical ways the entire world. And circles of grace flow from that cross to the cross of the good thief, and by extension, to you and I – to say that from this table we receive the grace we need (not deserve) to love God and neighbor.

If you want to know how to love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and your neighbor as yourself, enter into this saving mystery. Let the Eucharist work on your soul, and give you the strength and insight and forgiveness and love you need to continue its saving work.

What can you learn from church architecture? Quite a bit. Quite a bit…