Many of you will have heard about the fire a couple of days ago at Holy Name Cathedral here in Chicago. It is sad to see any church get damaged and it is doubly so in this case because extensive renovations to the Cathedral were just finished this past November.
Having said that, Michelle was just telling me that she was watching the TV coverage and was a little surprized at how emotional some people were over the fire. “While I understand people need to be grounded in a particular locale, I kept wanting to ask them if they were equally upset about their wounded sisters and brothers wandering in the streets all around them.” A great point.
It has always saddened me that I will offer profound reverence to the Tabernacle and then often proceed to grant scant respect to those “living tabernacles” who receive the Body and Blood of Christ with me at the Eucharist.
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Eric 02.06.09 at 10:45 am
I am slowly coming to realize that the first step of Christian faith is to be overwhelmed with the knowledge and experience of the breadth and depth of God’s love for me. The second step is to realize that God loves every other human being, even the most wicked, with the same intensity. From this vantage point we will follow Jesus’ two great commandments. May my reverence before the Tabernacle be the source of my reverence the living tabernacles throughout the world.
Paul, thank you so much for your words today.
Sensus Fidei 02.07.09 at 11:36 am
That is so beautiful, Eric and Fr. Paul, thank you both for expressing what I believe many of us often feel and perhaps find difficult to reconcile personally as well as externally, amid a physical world valuing inanimate opulence. A friend who recently visited the Vatican for the first time shared a similar view. These sentiments echo Blessed Teresa of Calcutta’s inspirations and also remind me of several powerful modern anecdotes in Fr. Coutinho’s book “How Big is Your God.”
I join you in praying we collectively as God’s creation can truly live in such divine revelation at this pivotal time, to know God in one another and revere each as the very body of Christ.
Paul 02.08.09 at 5:44 pm
Dear Sensus Fidei,
Thanks for your comment. As you say, if we could “know God in one another and revere each as the very body of Christ,” then the world would be a much better place.
Paul