(The 50th Anniversary of the First Service in the
‘New’ Church of the Holy Cross: Dallas, TX)
Joseph Peiper told the story of a Colloquium of
Medieval Scholars meeting at Cologne. During a break the participants were
invited to take a tour of the Cathedral, although when they arrived at the
Church they had to be told to put their cigarettes out. It is easy of course to feel indignation
about that sort of thing. But when I first read that I just hoped that they did
not think the holy water stoups were ashtrays!
On holiday in France, I recently had my own
encounter with people behaving badly in church. On the feast of SS. Philip and
James I went to Mass at the Basilica of Sainte Epeve in Nancy. The dedication
is to a rather obscure local sixth century bishop and the basilica built in the
19th century is not really noteworthy except as a perfect example of
neo-gothic clutter. But the Mass was
really lovely: the ordinary of the Mass sung in Latin, seven con-celebrants and
one hopelessly confused server, who showed up at the altar with the thurible
but without the boat and received from the priest a scowl which I recognized
immediately. At any rate about the time of the intercessions 30 or 40 loud and
enthusiastic German tourists poured into the church. What is it about these
Germans? I mean apart from obvious things like Martin Luther? One of the
con-celebrants hastily left the altar and showed the tourists the door. What they missed was the secret of the place,
what the guide books can never tell you: “the purpose of a church” wrote Sir
Ninian Comper, “is to move to worship, to bring a man to his knees, to refresh
his soul in a weary land.”
I have never had an attraction to ‘bare ruined
choirs’. Places like Fountains make me unspeakably sad, never mind churches
turned into museums or puppet theaters. When I visited Mont Sant Michel what made the
370 steps up to the Church worth it was to discover that the religious of the Community of
Jerusalem are now in residence, Mass offered daily, Lauds and Vespers sung. It
is impossible of course but if I could I would arrange my itinerary so as to
never visit any church except at a time when worship is being offered. However beautiful, however tawdry, grand or
plain, that is all that justifies the space that a Church takes up, that
utterly non utilitarian business of worship, adoration and praise.
It is entirely right to mark the anniversary of
the first Mass offered here. That after all is what made and makes this place a
church.
And it is meet and right that we do so on the
Feast of the Visitation of Our Lady. What Joseph Peiper said about Christian
religious ceremonial is also true of the building in which that ceremonial is
carried out: “the first thing that one
must realize is its derivative, subordinate, and secondary character , , , the
rendering present, the becoming present
of an event, which occurred in the remote past, namely, that event which we
customarily designate by the theological term ‘Incarnation’”.
The oldest Christian Church is the womb of the
Mother of Jesus, the oldest tabernacle, the oldest monstrance and her swift
journey to visit Elizabeth the first procession of the Blessed Sacrament.
There was the necessary recognition of the
essential secret:
“why is this granted me, that the mother of my
Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your
greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is
she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her
from the Lord.”
There was that burst of praise at what God has done: the
Magnificat:
magnifying the hidden Lord, enlarging his hidden presence. The Magnificant moves so effortlessly from the domestic and ordinary to the
universal and extraordinary: from Mary’s soul and her lowliness to her
magnification and beatitude to the wondrous transformation of all things, the
world turned upside down by the Incarnation:
His mercy on them that fear him :
throughout all generations. The strength of his arm which hath scattered
the proud, hath put down the mighty and hath exalted the humble and meek,
hath filled the hungry with good things and hath sent the rich empty
away.
Every Church must somehow reflect this Marian combination
of the domestic and the majestic.
Etienne Gilson expressed it perfectly when he
tried to answer the question “Where is Christendom?” He thought of all the
parishes which had welcomed him as he moved from teaching post to teaching
post:
“How can I name them all? They are too many to
remember, and there are some I no longer remember by name, although their
images still bring back to me, after so many years, the very same emotion that
I once experienced on entering them.
What was the name of that church in Chicago, not
far from the station, to the right and near to Michigan Avenue? I no longer
know. But how good it was to be there, and what peace of mind awaited me there
as I entered from the streets of the great city! Nothing in it disturbed the
silence, save for a thin trickle of water from Lake Michigan that fell drop by
drop in a grotto of Lourdes.
Where was I? Neither in America nor in France,
nor at any geographical point on earth. Yet I had surely reached a journey’s
end, since I was at home: I was in Christendom.”
Although we should expect that out of any
church, every church, we know better. But never mind here at least is the
journey’s end, home, the reality of Christendom.
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