The Dedication of Old St. Mary’s

Introduction

The Dedication of St. John Lateran

Because last Sunday was November the 2^nd we celebrated the feast of All Souls, instead of the 31^st Sunday of Ordinary Time. Because this Sunday is November 9^th those liturgical and pastoral wizards in Rome have directed you and me, here in Milwaukee and in this church of Old St. Mary’s, to celebrate this morning the feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran in Rome, instead of the 32^nd Sunday of Ordinary Time. That at first didn’t make me very happy. I found myself, here in Old St. Mary’s in Milwaukee, saying, “Well, so what?” I figured that some of you might be saying the same. But with a little effort to rescue myself and you and also with some research, I managed to wiggle my way out of my unhappiness.

On November 9 in the year 324, Pope Sylvester I, bishop of Rome, dedicated his cathedral church. As the cathedral church of the pope that church came to be honored as the “Mother and Head of all the Churches in Rome and the World.” That church and not the basilica of St. Peter’s, was the residence of the popes from the fourth to the fourteen century. It was the site for five ecumenical councils. Built on land owned by the Lateran family and dedicated to John the Baptist, the church came to be called John Lateran. It’s John Paul II’s cathedral church, just as St. John’s here in Milwaukee is Timothy Dolan’s cathedral church.

The temple not built by human hands

The prayers and readings today don’t speak about a temple made by human hands with mortar, brick and stone. They speak about a spiritual temple not built by human hands. In the opening prayer we pray, “God, our Father, from us as living stones you built an eternal temple to your glory.” And in the second reading Paul writes, “Brother and sisters, do you not know you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you” (I Cor. 3:9, 16)?

This spiritualizing of temple and church continues in the gospel today. Jesus, consumed with zeal for his father's house, drives the money‑changers and vendors out of the temple with a whip of cords. When asked by what authority he does such things, he mysteriously replies: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will rebuild it" (Jn 2:23‑21). ) Rebuild it in three days? My gosh, it took l0, 000 men to build the temple! It took 1000 priests as masons to construct its sacred sections. It took 46 years to complete it! Jesus is going to rebuild it in three days? But scripture says he wasn’t speaking about their physical temple made by human hands with mortar, brick and stone; he was speaking about the spiritual temple of his body.

The eternal clash

The history of the Christian church is an account of the eternal clash between the spiritual and invisible church on the one hand and the visible and institutional church on the other. Underlining the Protestant Reformation was the Reformers’ contention that the real church of Christ is spiritual and invisible. The real church of Christ is not a place you go to every week for Sunday mass. It’s not some structure you admire as tourists admire St. Peter’s or St. John Lateran in Rome, or as visitors frequently admire Old St. Mary in Milwaukee. The real church of Christ, the Reformers contended, is not a house built with mortar and brick. It’s not an institution constructed out of creeds and laws. It’s something much more spiritual and invisible. The real church of Christ, they maintained, is not something you go to. Rather it’s something that happens.

The church—a happening

That sounds pretty vague and intangible as spiritual things often do. Let me add some flesh and blood to it. When my father and his brother, Andrew, came to this country from Italy in the first quarter of the last century, they didn’t bring any Italian priests along with them. Many of them, in fact, brought with them only their anti-clericalism, which in those days was typical of some of the Italian peasantry. Consequently many of them never went to church. Like the unwashed shepherds of Bethlehem who belonged to the community of the un-synagogued, many of these immigrants belonged to the community of the un-churched. Now when the un-churched son of my un-churched cousin was killed in a motor-cycle accident, we decided to keep the whole thing honest. There would be no church service. There would be no organ music, no stained glass windows, no vaulted ceiling, and no sanctuary. There would just be a simple temple not built by human hands.

So on a magnificent summer day, we buried Robert in a temple built by the Lord of creation. There in an old but stately cemetery we buried him under gothic arches of towering oaks. There, under the cupola of God's deep blue heavens and upon God's green carpeted earth, his friends and peers (most of them also un-churched) spoke simple words, strummed simple cords and sang simple songs. There something wonderful happened! With a minimal amount of visible church present, the spiritual church had happened.

The words of St. Stephen to the High Priest just before he was stoned to death suddenly came to my mind. That proto-martyr of the faith tops off a long speech with these words: "King Solomon, indeed, built a wonderful house for God. But the Most High God does not live in houses built by human hands; for as the prophet says, `With the deep blue heavens as my throne and the green earth as my footstool, what house could you build me’” (Acts 7:48‑49; Is 66:1-2)? The real church of Christ, the eternal clash contends, is not a physical house; it’s a happening in a cemetery on a magnificent summer day.

The church - a house

Contrast that with what Carl Jung, the father of modern psychiatry, experienced on the very day of his First Holy Communion. He writes of it in his Memories, Dreams, Reflections. The long-awaited day approached, and he was led to the family church. There his father, the minister for the occasion, stood behind the altar in his familiar robes and read prayers from the liturgy. On the white altar cloth lay large trays filled with small pieces of bread which came from the local baker. Into a pewter cup his father poured wine which came from the local tavern. His father then ate a piece of the bread, took a swallow of the wine and passed the cup to one of the elders.

All were stiff, solemn, and a bit disinterested. The young boy looked on in suspense but could not see or guess whether anything unusual was happening inside the old men. He saw neither sadness nor joy in them. Suddenly his turn came. “I ate the bread, and it tasted flat. I sipped the wine, and it tasted sour,” he writes. “Then came the final prayer, and the people went out, neither depressed nor illumined with joy, but with faces that seemed to say, `Well, that’s that.’”

Only gradually in the course of the following days did Jung realize that he had gone to church expecting some height of religious experience, as Peter, James and John experienced on the Mount of the Transfiguration, but nothing had happened. Unlike those Apostles, who were crying out, “Oh how good it is for us to be here,” Jung found himself saying, “Why this isn’t the house of the living God! I must never go back there again.” He didn’t. His First Holy Communion was his very last. What light years away that experience was from that glorious summer day in the cemetery when church was, indeed, not a house but a happening.

The temple built by human hands

Obviously, we are not making some absurd statement that honest people don’t go to church, and that it’s only hypocrites who do. (You hear that often enough.) Why some of my best friends are church-goers, and they’re pretty decent people. We’re just making a simple positive statement about the temple not made by human hands—that optimum which is greatly to be desired and striven for. We should settle for nothing less. It’s also a consoling statement especially for those father and mothers whose sons and daughters might not be sitting with them in this temple of Old St. Mary’s built by human hands. They might be sitting in another temple not made by human hands, worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth (Jn 4:21, 23). Give them that much credit and be at peace and then wait for them in patience.

And what’s more today on this feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran, we also want to make a simple positive statement about the temple that is made by human hands. We are human beings and we have a need to worship in a house made by human hands. We are human beings, made of flesh and blood, and we have a need to worship with flesh and blood, with Eucharist and liturgy. We are human beings with ears that want to hear the proclamation of Good News in a bad news world. We are human beings with eyes that long to see in the gloom of November the glory of God in stained glass windows. We are human beings, and we have a need to go to a house built with mortar and brick and even with creeds and laws. We have need of going to such a house with the hope that in that house, and not just in cemeteries, something wonderful might happen.

The Dedication of Old St. Mary’s

So on this feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran in Rome, we call to mind the dedication of our own temple of Old St. Mary’s here in Milwaukee. A little research tells me that the plot of ground on which this church now stands was purchased in 1846 for $425.00. That two months later on Pentecost Sunday (April 19, 1846) the cornerstone was laid by Bishop Henni. That King Ludwig I of Bavaria donated the mural of the Annunciation over the main altar at the price of $100.00. That all the stained glass windows (each of which bears the figure of Mary) --that all of them together cost $850.00. That the fourteen Stations of the Cross, painted on canvas, are the work of the same artist who did the Annunciation mural. That the main altar, hand-carved of wood and absolutely irreplaceable today, was purchased at the cost of $2000.00.

Finally the day of dedication arrived. Bishop Henni sprinkled the exterior walls with holy water, and with holy oil anointed the door posts, the main altar and the interior walls at 12 different stations marked by crosses. An old volume on the history of Old St. Mary’s reads, “The dedication of the church took place on September 12, 1847. The ceremonies began at 6 o’clock in the morning. At 11 o’clock a pontifical high mass was held by Bishop Henni. The sermon was delivered in the English language by Reverend Shaw of South Bend, Indiana. During the afternoon vespers a German sermon was delivered by Reverend Father Carius.”

The Milwaukee Sentinel for September 14, 1847 reads, “The new and handsome church erected by the German Catholics of this city, at the corner of Main and Biddle streets, was consecrated to the worship of Almighty God on Sunday last with appropriate and impressive ceremonies. The church is 116 feet in length by 56 in breadth. It will cost, when completed, not far from $10,000.00.”

Conclusion

An old message in a new way

This church, dedicated a good century and a half ago, was protected from marauders and exterminators operating in the name of Vatican II. Nothing has been chopped down to their size. Everything is as was given to us by artists and believers of the past. Yes, even some of the misconceptions and mis-emphases and questionable practices of the past are there speaking to us in the statues and communion rail and confessionals and in the overall Byzantine busyness of the place. Here in Old St. Mary’s we are reminded that we did not come from no where, and here we are also reminded how far, indeed, we have come.

In this old church which reminds us from where we have come, we don’t wallow in unavailing nostalgia. We don’t keep preaching the same old message in the same old way. Instead we preach the same old message in a new way, so that the gospel might come alive and things might happen that make us cry out with Peter, James and John, “Oh how good it is for us to be here.”