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A place where the word of the Almighty can be recalled

Published: 08.29.08

Bishop Robert N. Lynch delivered this homily Aug. 13 during the dedication of the Bethany Retreat Center’s St. James Chapel.

ED FOSTER JR. | FC

For at least four and a half millennia of our existence on planet Earth, it has been an almost natural instinct of humankind to build places of worship to the Almighty. Places where the faithful can gather to offer sacrifice, prayers, gifts, praise. Places which reach to the heavens almost as if to provide a funnel from earth to heaven and heaven to earth. Places which express the faith of the people in the Almighty. Places where the words of the Almighty can be recalled and committed again to the human agenda.

The place of the Temple for our Jewish ancestors was huge. Solomon built the finest of Temples to Yahweh in Jerusalem. One needs only to visit Angkor Wat Temple in Cambodia, or Mecca in Saudi Arabia, or the Shinto Shrines of Japan to reconfirm that throughout human history it has been seen as good, holy, appropriate and necessary to honor God, by whatever name God is to be called, through a place and space which draws the attention of the occupant to the holy and provides a setting not just for prayer or liturgical action, but for meditation and silent reflection.

Tonight we entered this space through doors that recount one of the most famous moments in the life of Our Lord. Only twice in the Gospels does it mention that the Lord “cried.” He was often moved with pity, but the Hebrew verb for cry is used only twice – over Jerusalem and at the news of the death of his good friend, Lazarus.

Jesus went to Bethany as quickly as he could to comfort his deceased friend’s sisters, Martha and Mary. When he arrived, he beckoned the dead Lazarus back to life, restored him to life as a prefigurement of that day when we shall all be called forth from our bodily dwelling place to rejoin our souls in eternal life. We often forget that Lazarus had to undergo a second, final death about which we know nothing from the Scriptures. However, after being restored to life, he, too, like the other friends and followers of Jesus, was called to celebrate the presence of the resurrected Christ in the Eucharist or Mass.

So through those monumental doors we entered this sacred space, certainly far less grand but awe-inspiring nonetheless. At the front of the chapel in the doors and at its rear in the crucifixion scene behind me, our attention is drawn to death and new life. It was not Disney who first dreamed up “the Circle of Life,” but rather believers of almost every time and great religion who wrestled with sadness and joy, despair and hope. It is all there before us, inviting us to reflect in faith on God’s goodness in good times and in challenging times.

And in the middle of it all stands this magnificent altar, a symbol of the presence of God in the life of Catholics who approach and receive the living body of Christ. Unlike Solomon’s Temple, the sacrifice here is unbloody as we follow the commands of Jesus on the night before he died: Take and eat, take and drink – this is my body, this is my blood. Death loses its sting on the altar table and life proclaims its victory. Who or what can separate us from the love of Christ?

This particular chapel of St. James the Greater is largely absent the vast array of statues and objects which adorn most of our churches. Instead, our walls are full of glass through which we clearly see the glory of God’s creation in woods and lakes, in grass and saw grass. Last night while showing the chapel to a group which was having dinner here, several members of our resident herd of deer came to the grass between the altar and lake and looked first inside at us and then turned their gaze to the crucifixion scene. “Like the deer that yearn for running streams, so our hearts yearn for you, O God.”

What we dedicate to the glory of God this evening will be used by our youths who come here for retreats and guidance, to our soon-to-be weds who come and spend a night engaged in encountering God and his love for them and their love for one another, by married couples who will come to spend a weekend deepening their love for God and for one another, by women and men on Cursillo who will discover in this place their own sinfulness and will be made clean and whole in the sacraments of reconciliation and Eucharist, leaving here with a deepened sense of faith and trust in God.

This chapel will anchor this campus dedicated to lay ministry and the permanent diaconate because Bethany is our college of living out our faith and this chapel is its nuclear core from which we draw our energy for the journey. Parishes are already bringing their staffs here for days of recollection, and women and men and young people will be coming here to learn more about their faith and deepen their love of Christ.

There has been no one who has been inside this house of worship who has failed to be inspired by its simple beauty, by the glory of its altar, by the religious meaning of its clear windows, by its glorious cupola pointing beyond the galaxy of stars to that place where we shall one day be with Christ, with Martha, with Mary, with Lazarus, with Jimmy, with Pope John Paul II, with Mother Teresa, with John the beloved disciple and with Mary, his mother and our mother, as we, too, pass from death to new life. Many of those present here this evening have willed to our present and to future generations a temple to the glory and majesty of God, a place of prayer, a house of worship and place set apart from our busy world and its values. God is being praised in this place and will be praised long beyond our lifetimes.

What more can we give? What more can we do? You need only speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.

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