Weddings, New Priests & Strip Malls
Christianity is first and foremost about the Incarnation of Christ. This past weekend I saw three glimpses of Christ in our world. On Saturday, it was at a wedding. Yesterday I saw it in a newly ordained priest as he presided for the first time at mass, and finally in the strip mall pictured above.
Almost eleven years ago, in his homily at my mass of ordination to the priesthood, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz reminded me of the way in which God is always present to us in the world with these words,
….and yet just as God can take a plate and a cup and make it a sacred paten and chalice, and take a building and make it a sacred church, can’t he also take a human being and make him a sacred priest?
This is the essence of what we mean as Catholics when we say we are sacramental people. We believe that the Incarnation of Christ continues to restore the world to what God always intended it to be.
This past weekend I seemed to encounter this reality everywhere I turned. The first instance was in the celebration of the marriage of a young couple in our parish. They were both extremely nervous as they arrived and remained so throughout the ceremony. They also exuded joy to be able to publicly profess their love for one another and to give themselves totally to one another for the rest of their lives. Marriage for Catholics symbolizes the love that Christ has for the Church. It is a sacrificial, yet joyful love that we see in Christ’s life, death and resurrection. This young couple has been called by God to point to Christ’s love through the joy and suffering that will accompany the love they have for one another.
Yesterday I was privileged to see yet another place where God has chosen to manifest himself to us as I concelebrated a mass of thanksgiving with our most newly ordained priest in the Diocese of Knoxville, Fr. Doug Owens. Fr. Doug and I share our home parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Chattanooga, so it was a pleasure to spend the morning there with him as he presided for the first time at the Eucharist. As a priest, it is always great to see new priests ordained and full of the energy and excitement that comes with the newness of their ministry. Perhaps without even knowing it, they capture in their faces and movements at the liturgy the wonder that should always be present there when we come together to give thanks to God for all he has given us. Yesterday’s mass was no exception. Fr. Doug and his friends were glowing with excitement. He took some time near the end of the liturgy to thank all those gathered and to say simply, “I love you”. That’s a excellent summary of what priesthood should represent, loving and caring for God’s people and modeling for them what it means to continually give thanks to God. The priest is a living symbol of Christ’s presence among his people. I am glad to have Fr. Doug as a member of our presbyterate.
There is one other thing that brought my thoughts to focus on the Incarnation this weekend and that is the strip mall pictured above. After Fr. Doug’s celebration, I decided that it was a good day to take the long way home, so instead of hopping onto the I-75, I drove home by way of Highway 11. As I drove into the city of Athens, I noticed this little coffee shop and strip mall which to most people would probably look like your ordinary row of businesses. The thing that makes it stand out to me is that I know that up until just a few years ago in the same place stood St. Mary’s Catholic Church. St. Mary’s has since moved to a new piece of property where they built a beautiful new place of worship, but for years the community met to celebrate the Eucharist each week on the same spot where there is now a coffee shop. In my mind, their years of prayer in that particular place has sanctified the ground there, and even though the property is no longer owned by the Church, and even though it is no longer a place of worship, the holiness of what took place there remains.
The power of transformation that has been accomplished through Christ in his Incarnation is incredible. It is the power that continues to save the world. We are called to participate in his work by making the world what it is meant to be, sacred and holy. When we faithfully live out our vocation, when we sanctify our churches, our homes, and our places of work, we begin to understand what is meant by the universal call to holiness. It is a call to share deeply in God’s life, right here and right now in the ordinary places of our lives that God continues to transform in extraordinary ways.
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