A Candle Burning in the Wind

Introduction

Much room

The first notes of Jesus’ return to the Father in the ascension are being struck here: “Your hearts are troubled because I am leaving you. You trust in God; now trust also in me. I tell you there are “many dwelling places in my Father’s house, and I am going there to prepare a place for you” (Jn 14: 1-2). “Dwelling places” seems to be a clumsy translation of the Greek word “mone.” A more familiar translation reads, “There are many mansions in my Father’s house.” That’s even worse, because a million dollar home on Lake Drive isn’t at all what the original Greek has in mind. I learned just this year in preparation for your homily that the word means more likely “places of rest.” “In my Father’s house there are many places of rest and I am going to prepare one of them for you.” Most of the other translations simply read, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms, and I am going to prepare a place for you” (Jn 14:1-2). At the end of the day, they all basically say, “In my Father’s house there is room for many.”

At the end of his life, as Jesus was leaving the world through his impending death, he tells the world that in his Father’s house there is room for many. And by a kind of reverse psychology we are reminded that at the beginning of his life, as he was coming into this world, the world told him and his mother Mary and father Joseph, “There is no room for you in the inn” (Lk 2: 7). After their long and weary journey from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea, there was no place of rest for them.

Vatican II: a council about the church

On January 25^th, 1959, Pope John XXIII, recently elected, announced in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Wall his decision to hold an ecumenical council. It was to have basically but one overriding task assigned it: the church in council was to ask itself but one question: Who am I, and what in the world should I be doing? All the other questions or issues taken up in the council, at the end of the day, were in some way related to that one overriding question: Who am I, and what should I be doing in the world?” A one-line summary for Vatican II would be this: It was a council about the church by the church. (The present crisis keeps suggesting to many that now is the time for a Vatican III with but one overriding issue assigned it: that of human sexuality.)

The working definition at Vatican II

After three years of preparation, the Council opened with great solemnity in the Basilica of St. Peter’s on 11^th of October 1962. The church, in the person of three thousand bishops from every nook and corner of the globe, came streaming into the Eternal City to hold a council about the church. But the bishops came fortified with a working definition of the church that dated back to the Council of Trent (1545-1563). That council was summoned as a response to the Protestant Revolution ignited by Martin Luther. That working definition of the church which the council fathers brought with them in ‘62 was the very same definition of the church that many of us more senior Catholics were raised on, right up to the very eve of Vatican II.

According to that definition, found in the famous Baltimore Catechism which was our bible in those days, there are three visible ingredients that make up the church, namely, obedience to the hierarchy, that is to say, to bishops and especially to the Bishop of Rome (the Pope), profession of the orthodox teachings of the Church, and participation in the seven sacraments. These are all visible elements; it is easy to see whether they are present or not. According to that working definition, the church then is the visible assembly of all those who fulfill these three visible requirements. But that definition leaves no room in the inn, no resting place, for non-Catholic Christians (of whom there are millions), and certainly no room and resting place for non-Christians (of whom there are many more millions). At the end of the day, there was resting room only for Roman Catholics. We crystallized that non-sense in an old dictum that came from one of the church fathers, who probably said it in an unenlightened moment, but which stuck for centuries, working havoc in the life of the church. St. Cyrian in the third century said, “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.” “Outside the church there is no salvation.

We shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves; Protestantism also has had a problem making room for others. It’s stauncher and more fundamentalist brands maintain that if you don’t believe in Jesus, there is no room for you in the inn, no resting place for you in heaven. No room for all the Buddhists in China, one billion of them. No room for all the Hindus in India, millions of them. But Jesus has just said to us, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms.” When a house has a “No room” sign on it, writes Fr. Burtschael in his book Philemon's Problem, then whosesoever house it is, it is not the house of the Father in heaven. It's not the house that God has built for man, but rather the house that man has built for God. And it should be torn down.

The missing ingredient: mystery

As Vatican II progressed, it became clear to the council fathers that something was missing in their working definition of the church. Little by little, inch by inch, through one debate after another on the council floor (which was the huge nave of St. Peter’s Basilica), it began to dawn on many what was missing. Missing in their definition of church, missing in fact for centuries, was indeed the most important ingredient of all -- an invisible ingredient, namely the presence of God in the church, calling the members together, sustaining them with grace and working through them as they carry out the mission of the church.

In other words, what began to emerge in Vatican II was an understanding of the church as mystery; an understanding that at the very heart of the church lies the hidden presence of God. Church as mystery: that’s church seen as the insertion of a divine invisible reality into human history. (Now that indeed might sound like theological jargon; it is really much more than that.) Church as mystery: that’s church seen as a gift received from on high, which you can never encompass or exhaust with your neat little definitions and your pat answers. Church as mystery: that’s church seen as something more than meets the eye.

The paschal candle and mystery

Look at that paschal candle burning brightly over there. It was lit at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. The rubrics prescribe that it remain in the sanctuary for the duration of the Easter Season which lasts for fifty days commemorating the fifty day period during which Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection from the dead. The rubrics also prescribe that the candle be lit for the Sunday Assembly during those fifty days.

What is that all about? It is about mystery. That paschal candle burning brightly over there announces mystery to the Sunday Assembly saying, “There’s more here in our midst than meets the eye.” That lit candle announces mystery: a divine invisible reality inserted into human history. That lit candle announces mystery: it says what one of our Eucharistic prayers says, “Jesus now lives with you in glory but he is also here on earth among us.” That lit candle announces mystery: a gift received from on high, which you can’t wrap up in neat definitions and pat answers.

The working definition transformed

Well, through much debate and sweat that working definition of the church underwent a marvelous transformation. And the distillate of it all came to be written down in the council’s two most important documents, which have changed the whole course of our Catholic lives. That first document answers the question, “Who am I?” It has two titles. The first is Lumen Gentium, from the opening Latin words meaning “The Light of the World.” The other title is The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. The second document answers the question, “What should I be doing in the world?” It also has two titles. The first is Gaudium et Spes (from the opening Latin words meaning “The joy and the hope.” The other title is The Church in the Modern World.

The very first chapter of the first document is entitled, The Mystery of the Church. What’s so earth shattering about that? It highlights the council’s intent to take back the church as mystery, as a divine invisible reality inserted into human history. That sense of church as mystery was lost at the Council of Trent as it was fighting the Protestant Reformers who were attacking the visible ingredients of the church like authority, doctrine and sacraments.

Some of the council fathers were unhappy with the revision which transformed the church back into the mystery it used to be in earlier centuries. Mystery, after all, stresses the invisible, and before we know it, they argued, we’re going to be looking just like the Protestant Reformers who are always insisting that the really true church of Christ is invisible: you really can’t see it; you really can’t point your finger and say, “There it is.”

In the period following Vatican I, some of the Catholic faithful also were unhappy with “church as mystery.” Once the church is mystery, you’re dealing with “a divine invisible gift received from on high,” which you can no longer wrap up in neat definitions and pat answers. That was, and still is, the greatest disappointment over Vatican II for some Catholics who like things clear-cut. And this is what a lot of the sore feeling in our midst is all about.

If the church is mystery, then there’s more here than meets the eye. That’s what that bright burning Easter candle wishes to proclaim. If the church is not mystery, then what you see is all there.” Then in our present moment and crisis, all you see is scandal, abuse, betrayal, dishonesty, impurity, and top of the list, hypocrisy. If the church is not mystery, then that’s all you see, and that’s all there is. If the church is not mystery, then Jesus, who has ascended into heaven and is with the Father in glory, is not also here on earth among us. Then we might just as well blow the candle out, and be honest.

We don’t blow the candle out, for we have faith. If might be flickering a bit in the roaring wind blowing through the sanctuary these days. But at the end of the day, we still believe that there’s more here than what the media is “sticking in our face;” more here than just scandal, abuse, betrayal, dishonesty, impurity, and, top of the list, hypocrisy. We still believe that Jesus who now lives with the Father in glory is also here on earth among us.

The Riddle: human and divine

Contradictory as it might sound, this sinful and unholy church of ours, at one and the same time has deep wellsprings of holiness and goodness within herself, out of which she generates in every age saints like Francis of Assisi, the leper priest Father Damien of Molokai, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, and “countless holy men and women of every time and place,” as we pray on the Feast of all Saints. Goodness doesn’t always have the visibility that evil has. You can’t easily put it in print as you can scandal. At the end of the day, we ask ourselves, “If we leave this sinful church of ours, ridden at this moment with sex scandals, to whom shall we go for moral and physical purity?” To the world out there? To our culture out there with its mighty mass menu of flippant sex?

Again contradictory as it might sound, this sinful church of ours, indicted at this present moment for “cover-up” and dishonesty, at one and the same time has deep wellsprings of truthfulness and integrity within herself, out of which she generates in every age people who stand up and courageously “speak truth to power.” Again at the end of the day, we ask ourselves, “If we leave this sinful church of ours, to whom shall we go for honest and transparent people? To whom shall we go for prophets?” To Enron? To the Halls of Congress?

Conclusion

Time out for mystery

Our present crisis is a crisis of mystery. We wonder whether there is more to the church than what we are hearing and seeing these days, or whether that’s all there is? It’s the very same kind of crisis we all have out there in our weekday lives, wondering whether there is more than meets the eye, or whether what we see is all there is? It’s the very same kind of crisis which happens weekly in the Sunday Assembly when the priest holds the Bread on high, and we find ourselves wondering whether there’s more there than meets the eye, or whether what we see is all there is?

In fact, the Sunday Assembly and Sabbath Rest is really time-out and rest from the non-mystery which wears us down all week long with its constant chant that, “What you see is all there is, is all there, is all there is.” The Sunday Assembly builds us up and sends us forth in search of the “more than meets the eye.” Once found, it becomes the gospel’s “pearl of great price.” For it is mystery, the more than meets the eye in our lives, that gives life meaning and makes it worthwhile living.

Storm clouds are gathering all around us.

And a roaring wind is blowing through the sanctuary.

And there stands faith,

"like a candle in the wind:

never fading with the sunset

when the rain sets in."