A Feast about a church building, or more specifically the dedication of a church – that’s strange. If it were Saint Peter’s in Rome it might make a bit more sense. At least everyone has heard of that.
Just as a Feast dedicated to a saint we’ve never heard of might lead us into an exploration of something new, maybe this weird-seeming Feast can add something to our Christian life.
Although Christianity started with one very specific person in one very particular time and place, it has demonstrated over the centuries and throughout humanity worldwide that it is relevant to everyone – literally everyone, everywhere, at every time. This universality was certainly not obvious at its foundation. St Augustine called out the universality of the church (its catholicity) as one of its defining features, in opposition to those who wanted to restrict participation in some way. Our Church was Catholic long before it was Roman.
While this universality can be glorious and uplifting it can also be challenging. As human beings we have a natural tendency to need boundaries, limits, “thus far but no further”. We struggle to accept the call to embrace universality, true catholicity, that Jesus gave us. Push back against this call is in the ascendant in many societies in our time.
If we are to follow Jesus we have no choice other than to accept a church which is universal and catholic, as declared in our Creed. But that church also recognizes how we need to be grounded in the particular, in our connection to a particular time, place, and community. We don’t live in an abstract world where everyone is equal in characteristics or in outcomes. We live in a world defined by differences and indeed by inequality. Jesus was well aware of that. The issue is how we handle it.
We should hold onto the connections to our past, to our history, to the places that formed us. Those are the things that make us unique and individual. I doubt many of us feel a connection to the Lateran Basilica or the year 324, or even to the bigger picture of the huge impact of the adoption of Christianity by the Roman emperor Constantine at that time, which today’s Feast points to. However those things are part of our history. The recognition of that should inspire us also to celebrate those particular times and places that are important in who we are.
But having recognized that, and taking strength from it, we are then called to transcend those particular connections – not in some abstract or philosophical sense but in the very immediate and practical sense of knowing that everyone is our neighbor, everyone belongs, that we cannot restrict our care and our love to those who are “like us”. The temple that Jesus was going to rebuild was not a great church in Jerusalem, or anywhere else. It was his Body (John 2:13-22). We are that Body – we are the body of Christ – we receive it and we become it. That body is every-body, everywhere. We are unique and we are one. We must behave like it.