Given at St. Dominic’s Priory, St. Louis, MO. Sunday, November 9, 2008.
      “Unless I put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.â€
At face value, these words that we all recognize—the doubting words of the Apostle Thomas—seem to be the ultimate example of a lack of faith. But, Thomas’ doubt is, in the end, simply human. His desire for physical proof is one that we each know all too well. It is natural for us to want to touch and to see… to use our senses to understand. In fact, it’s the only way we get information. This is one of the reasons why analogies––like the one St Paul uses of the Church as a building––are so important to us. We use what we do know, in order to understand what we cannot already see for ourselves.
   In every age, God has sought to reveal himself to us through physical things: the greatest of those being his Son—God made flesh and bone, Jesus, whom we could touch and see and hear and who now dwells among us as St. Paul tells us. And when Jesus established his Church, he built it—not on an idea—but on the real, living person of St. Peter.
Today, the feast of the Dedication of the cathedral of Rome, in which we celebrate the dedication of a building, reminds us of this same reality—the concreteness—of the Church. The great thing about buildings is… they don’t die. Monuments may very easily stand for others to see long, long after those who built them.
   As we have just heard from St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, we—the Church—are a building. But not just any building: one designed by God, built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. Paul identifies himself as the architect of that building. He is the wise master builder, the one who explains how to build what God has designed. When an architect designs a building, there are three things he must do:
He must make it sturdy,
He must make it understandable, usable,
And, the last is often forgotten… he is to make it beautiful.
We don’t just ask that buildings do what they are supposed to do—we also want them to be pleasing to look at and live in. In fact, this is usually the first criticism against any building: it’s ugly.
   We react to what we know immediately, what we can see right away. Either we like the way something looks, it appeals to us, it fascinates us—we say it’s beautiful—or we are repulsed, and we say it’s ugly… it’s lame, it bites, it’s boring.
Because the Church is a visible thing—both church buildings and the people in them—there is going to always be an immediate, very human, gut reaction to them… we are going to be attracted to the Church, or we are going to be repulsed by it. For, Paul, who was building up the Church, his main goal was to bring the Gospel of Jesus to everyone that he could—to lay that foundation. The Church’s goal is the same—to evangelize, to bring the Gospel to everyone in the hopes that they might see the truth, the goodness, and the beauty of the Gospel and believe in Jesus Christ.
Benedict XVI, before he was elected pope, wrote that really, there are only two effective arguments for Christianity:
The lives of the saints…
And the art of the Church…
In fact, he specifically goes on to mention that clever excuses and justifications are poor witnesses to the Lord in comparison to the splendor of holiness and art within the Chuch. What he points out here are the two most VISIBLE things about the Church—they are also the most attractive. The lives of the saints are for us the greatest examples of how to live like Jesus Christ. They are saints because their lives were conformed to Christ… who is the foundation of God’s building. I can’t build a skyscraper on the foundation of your grandmother’s house. Our lives must be like the foundation they are built on. The saints lived beautiful lives: their heroism, their loyalty, their undying faith, their great love…The beauty of their lives attracts us and inspires us to live like them—to be saints ALSO. In each age the Church is led first and foremost by her saints. If you think the Church needs saints, like I do, then you ought to recognize that the saints of the twenty first century will come from among US. If we are not the saints of the next generation, there won’t be any.
Likewise, the art of the Church is meant to be beautiful, and the Cathedral of Rome—St. John Lateran—is a fine example. But when I say art, I mean everything that we do in the Church and for the Church. All the preaching we do, the schoolwork we do, the prayers we say, the songs we sing, the thoughts we think, everything that we create… all should be beautiful. But why should they be beautiful? Not simply to please us, but so that others will see the beauty of our lives and the work that we do and will be inspired to love God and follow Jesus Christ. Our lives and the art that we produce should be the beautiful adornments of God’s Holy Temple, the Church, pointing to the God who dwells among us.
St. Thomas Aquinas defined beauty principally as radiance. He said that things that are beautiful shine. They reflect the light of Christ—who is the light of the world.
But Jesus also said: You are the light of the world. The more we are like the saints, the more we are like Jesus, the more we and our work will shine for all to see. This is our calling, to be God’s beautiful and holy temple, just as Christ is…
To radiate the love and the beauty of the Creator, so that all may see and… what? Say, “oooh, that’s pretty.â€Â ?
No, so that they also will see, contemplate and BELIEVE.
