Solemnity of the Dedication of St. John Church
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| 1958 Original Church |
Ordinarily, we would be celebrating the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord today and closing out the Christmas Season. That is what our parishioners who today attended our St. Thomas Aquinas site celebrated. But for us at St. John the Evangelist, this day is a special day of a different kind: an anniversary. 55 years ago today, this Church was dedicated to the glory of God under the patronage of St. John the Evangelist. 55 years ago today Bishop Joseph Albers, first bishop of Lansing, celebrated the Rite of the Dedication of a Church, initiating this place as a temple of the true God. 55 years ago today, prophecies were fulfilled: the oracle from the Book of Malachi, that “From the rising of the sun to its setting…Incense offerings are made to my name everywhere, and a pure offering”; the oracle from the Book of Isaiah that we heard this morning: “foreigners who join themselves to the Lord…To love the name of the Lord, to become his servants…Them I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer; Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples”. In this place a pure offering is made. In this place we, most of us Gentiles, that is, non-Jews, who have been joined to the Lord through Baptism so that we can love the Lord and be His servants, we have been brought to this mountain, represented in the raised sanctuary, and our sacrifices, joined to the one perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, made present for us in sacramental signs in the Eucharist, are accepted by God. This place is a house of prayer for all peoples. Brothers and sisters, to quote David in Psalm 118: “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it”!!!
Now,
we believe that God exists in all places.
He cannot be contained because of his immensity and transcendence. And yet, we have this place, this
building, which we have set aside for the worship of God and the edification,
the building up, of His People. Why? For one, we also believe that God, whom
the heavens and the earth cannot contain, chose to limit Himself and take
flesh, born of the Virgin Mary.
God chose to be contained as the Divine Nature was united to Human
Nature in Jesus. As we say in the
Creed, “by the power of the Holy Spirit, he was incarnate of the Virgin Mary
and became man.” God chose to make
a temple for Himself as He joined Himself to us in the Incarnation. Secondly, we are people who operate by
our senses. Everything we know
comes through our senses. And so
we build a place that becomes for us a physical reminder that God dwells among
us. We set aside a place where we
can come and offer worship to God: to thank Him for His goodness; to ask for
His blessing; to lift up in prayer our brothers and sisters.
This
building becomes a symbol, a sensible reality that points to an invisible
reality. This building is a
special kind of symbol, a sacrament.
I don’t mean that we’re adding sacraments to the seven Sacraments
instituted by Christ to confer grace.
But it is a sacrament in the sense that it is a physical reality that
gives us the opportunity to receive grace, because as we enter the nave of the
church and enter our pew, or go to light a candle at the Holy Family corner, or
pass some time in prayer at the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, we can receive God’s
life, what we call grace.
This
building also is a type of sacrament because it is meant to represent us. We are the living stones that are being
built up into the temple, as St. Peter reminds us in the second reading
today. God desires each of us to
be part of his heavenly temple. He
is crafting each of us into an individual stone that will fit perfectly into
the New Jerusalem in heaven. Each
of us has a different role to play in the building. Christ Jesus is the cornerstone, with the twelve apostles
making up the rest of the foundation of the heavenly temple. And we build on that foundation, and
add to the structure and beauty of the temple as we are chiseled so that we can
fit into the place God has set aside for us. But, unlike stones which are inanimate, we the living
stones, can also form ourselves, and hopefully we cooperate with God in being
formed into the right stone for the right place, rather than forming ourselves
to our own standards, and risk being thrown out of the construction of the
heavenly temple because we have made ourselves have no place in the temple of
God. But, if we let God cleanse
our temple, our soul and body, as Jesus did in the Gospel, then we know we can
have a place in the building up of the temple not made by human hands, but made
by the hand of God.
Our
prayers remind us, too, that we are the temple of God, and this building
symbolizes what we are called to be.
The Prayer over the Offerings says, “Recalling the day when you were
pleased to fill your house with glory and holiness, O Lord, we pray that you may make of us a
sacrificial offering always acceptable to you.” And our preface continues the theme: “For in this visible
house that you have let us build and where you never cease to show favor to the
family on pilgrimage to you in this place, you wonderfully manifest and
accomplish the mystery of your communion with us. Here you build up for
yourself the temple that we are
and cause your Church, spread throughout the world, to grow ever more and more
as the Lord’s own Body, till she reaches her fullness in the vision of peace,
the heavenly city of Jerusalem.”
May we truly be stones that are fit to be a part of the heavenly temple,
to which God calls us through Baptism.
Because, as Bishop Albers said about the students (though it applies to
all of us) as he dedicated this church on 12 January 1958, “The greatest
possession they have today or ever will have in their entire lives is that of
their Faith. Should this be lost,
everything will be lost. And no
matter what material success they may attain later on, before God their lives will
be a failure.”
I wish
to close with words of gratitude, again quoting Bishop Albers: “I wish to use
this occasion to express my appreciation to everyone who has helped in the
realization of this building whether through contributions, advice, planning,
counseling or other ways. I am
especially grateful to the many thousand donors who have given of their means…I
am confident that Almighty God will reward them with an increase of Faith and a
greater love and devotion to Him and to souls, for their generosity in
providing these means to care for the young men and women here at Michigan
State University.”