Can It Indeed Be That God Dwells on Earth?

Homily for the Anniversary of the Dedication of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen

In the year 986, struggling to hold together his pagan realm, Prince Vladimir of Kiev, dispatched his ambassadors throughout Europe to survey several religions to find a creed for his people to adopt as their own. After observing their rituals and meeting with their leaders, the ambassadors reported back to their prince with their assessment. Among the Muslims in Bulgaria, they found no happiness among them, but instead only sorrow and a dreadful stench. Although impressed by the Latin Christian ceremonies in the Holy Roman Empire, they told the prince: we beheld no glory there.

Finally, in Constantinople, Vladimir’s ambassadors were taken by the Emperor himself to the Hagia Sophia, and of the divine liturgy of the Eastern Church, they said:

We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among humanity. We cannot forget that beauty.

With this final report, Vladimir and his realm were baptized, and a pagan people were converted to Christ and to his Church because of the glory of the Lord that was seen in his temple.

Temples are where the glory of the Lord is to be seen. When the first temple in Jerusalem was completed, the King Solomon gazed at it in wonder: Can it indeed be that God dwells on earth? When the Hagia Sophia was consecrated, the Emperor Justinian entered and exclaimed at its might: O Solomon! I have surpassed thee! When this Cathedral was opened sixty-three years ago, I do not know if Archbishop Keough claimed to have outdone either the King or the Emperor; but we have seen the Lord’s glory here all the same.

There is another, greater temple, however, that surpasses all three; and in this temple, the Lord’s glory is seen not in glass and in stone, but in flesh and in blood: the temple of Christ’s Body, the Church itself. The Church is not an institution, nor an association, nor a political party, nor a club. The Church is a person and is built of people: the person of Jesus Christ the Head joined as one to all the members of his Body. As Paul teaches: In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. The Church – you and me – is where the glory of the Lord ought to be seen. Some may ask: can it indeed be that God dwells on earth? And those who have met the Church should answer: We are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among humanity. We cannot forget that beauty.

We are all aware, however, that that is not how people usually describe their experience with the Church. Our own experience with the Church has likely been at least a little rocky. I have always found a delightful irony in the traditional entrance antiphon for the dedication of a church: Terribilis est locus iste. A laymen’s missal would give the translation: This place is awesome. A more literal – and sometimes more honest – translation would be: This place is terrible.

And those words, according to that second meaning, may have been what came out of Jesus’ mouth when he entered the Jerusalem temple and saw what it had become. In John’s account, Jesus does not call it a den of thieves, but the picture John paints says the same. Money-changers and sacrifice peddlers practiced extortion and usury like virtues. Still, Jesus describes the temple in today’s Gospel not as a den of thieves but as a marketplace, and on my reading, that is actually a greater condemnation. A marketplace is a site of exchange: those who have give what they have to those who have not. It is not so much that the temple is a marketplace that Jesus condemns but rather what is being exchanged. The temple was supposed to be the place where the people gave their life to God and where God gave his life to his people. But instead, filled with thieves, life is being exchanged instead for death. Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus says: All who came before me are thieves and robbers. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. But Jesus is not a thief. He does not exchange life for death. Rather, he exchanges death for life. And he tells us as much: I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. The Church is the place where our life, which on its own can only end in death, is exchanged for the only life that outlasts death itself. It is a just cause for outrage when the Church barters anything less than life in abundance.

But despite her scandals, what the Church offers remains unchanged, for God’s protection is with her against the assaults of hell on the inside and from the out. Through it all, the Church remains the Body of Christ. The Church remains the Lord’s temple. The Church remains the means of life in this world and the next. What the Church needs are people who believe that. Who believe the word Jesus has spoken. But belief requires more than mere notional assent. Belief in the Church must go all the way down. What the Church needs are those who live the life of the Church so deeply that it saturates the depth of their being and expands out to cover their horizon in every direction. That means, above all, developing an authentic relationship with the Lord in prayer, meditating on the words of sacred Scripture, learning from the witness of apostolic Tradition, and holding in faith what the holy Church teaches to be true. But that also means that all of the above should be of consequence. Living the life of the Church must extend to our social, political, and cultural engagement with the world, or else we are not truly living it. And if we are not truly living the life of the Church that has been given us, then when people see us, they will not see the Lord’s glory. Among us they will find no happiness, but instead only sorrow and a dreadful stench: the stench of a life poorly lived that is bound for death.

But Christ came that we may have life and have it abundantly. And if we possess the abundant life Christ gives us through the Church, then those who find us will say:

We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among humanity. We cannot forget that beauty.

And they, too, will be converted to Christ and his Church; and they, too, will share abundant life with us; and they, too, will be the temple where the Lord’s glory is seen.

On this anniversary of this cathedral’s dedication, let us commit ourselves again to become still more beautiful than glass and stone, to become a still more worthy dwelling of God on earth, one that surpasses all others, and one in which earth and heaven become one.  

Homily preached on November 12 & 13, 2022 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, in observance of the 63rd anniversary of its dedication on November 15, 1959.