November 9, 2014
A study on accidental death occurrences shows that
(a) 20% of all fatal accidents occur in automobiles,
(b) 17% of all accidents occur in the home,
(c) 14% of all accidents occur to pedestrians on streets or sidewalks,
(d) 16% of all accidents involve traveling by air, rail, or water,
(e) 32% of all deaths occur in hospitals,
and (f) only .001% of all deaths occur in church during worship services.
According to this study, therefore, the safest place for you to be at any given point in time is not in your car, or in the home or in the hospital but in church!
Today we celebrate the dedication of the basilica of St John Lateran in Rome.
Why celebrate the dedication of a church in far away Rome, you may ask.
It is to remind us of the importance of the church building as sacred space set apart for personal and collective encounter with God.
Historically, the basilica of St John Lateran is the oldest church of Rome and the
highest ranking church in the world, followed by St Peter's basilica in the Vatican. As such it is the mother of all churches.
When we celebrate its dedication to God, therefore, we celebrate the mystery of God's special presence and indwelling in buildings set apart for divine worship, including our own parish church.
We know that God is everywhere.
Yet when the people of God erect a building and dedicate it totally to God's service,
God's glory comes to dwell in that building in such a way that the building can now be called the house of God.
Solomon recalls this mystery in his prayer of dedication of the temple in Jerusalem: "Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!" (1 Kings 8:27).
So, while we celebrate God's special indwelling in a temple, we must remind ourselves that God's presence is not confined in the temple.
God is still everywhere.
But God manifests His glory in a special way in some persons, places, and things.
A temple or church is one such place.
In earlier days, a temple, church or shrine was revered so much as to suggest that God dwelt exclusively in such places.
People went to church, participated in service, received communion and went home without knowing who was sitting beside them in church.
Spirituality was very individualistic and the man or woman sitting next to you was rather seen as a distraction in one's intimate communion with God.
Worshipers forgot that we are brothers and sisters, and that we come to church to worship God as family.
To discourage this self-centered religiosity, Vatican Council II introduced some changes in worship such as the priest facing the people at Mass and worshipers exchanging the sign of peace.
But we swung from one extreme to the other, and today many Christians have lost the sense of the church as a sacred place, to the point that the comportment of many worshipers in our churches today borders on irreverence.
Many Christians have altogether abandoned traditional practices that were meant to remind us that we are in God's presence when we enter the church.
These include such little things as signing oneself with holy water on entering the church, genuflecting or bowing to the altar before taking one's seat or before leaving the church, and lowering one's voice when one has cause to talk in church.
When we realize that the church is a holy place, a place of encounter with God, with one another and with oneself, then we bring a certain disposition of mind and body to church service which helps make worship an uplifting rather than boring experience.
Today's celebration of the dedication of St John Lateran invites us to renew our faith in the church as a house of prayer and to cultivate habits and practices that make it easy for God to encounter us whenever we go to church.
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