Word to the Wise
Thursday, September 26, 2019 - Thursday in the 25th Week in Ordinary Time
[Hag 1:1-8 and Luke 9:7-9]Thus says the Lord of hosts: This people says: "The time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord." (Then this word of the Lord came through Haggai, the prophet: Is it time for you to dwell in your own paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways!
The setting for the prophecy of Haggai is Jerusalem a few years after the return from exile in Babylon. The returnees have built homes and started crops, but things were not going well. Apparently there was a drought and depression in the land. Haggai blames this on the failure of the people to put God first, because they had failed to rebuild the temple. Although there is a great deal of theological significance involved here, the challenge was also a shrewd way to unite the community in a common cause. The centrality of the "second temple" would last until the Romans tore it down 600 years later (70 A.D.) It has never been rebuilt.
The significance of a religious building - a church, synagogue, mosque, temple - can be powerful. Consider the significance that St. Peter's Basilica in Rome has for Roman Catholicism (and it's not even the "official cathedral" of the Diocese of Rome, which is the Basilica of St. John Lateran). Any bishop seeking to close a small church in a rural community discovers quickly the significance of that church building to that community. The building becomes a kind of tabernacle of collective memories: baptisms, weddings, funerals, processions and celebrations! In east central Texas there are some churches called "the painted churches" because of their interior art that reflected the German, Czech and Polish farming communities of the time they were built. Some of them no longer function as parish churches and have become to most people a stop on a tour, yet they speak to the collective history and memory of the people.
Judaism would survive and revive after the destruction of both the first (586 BC) and second temples (70 AD). How would we Catholics feel if one of the earthquakes that occasionally hit Rome or a hostile bomb destroyed St. Peter's? Consider the reaction in France to the fire that destroyed Notre Dame Cathedral recently. The prophet Jeremiah warned the people about empty religious formalism when they placed their confidence simply in ceremony and the presence of the temple (Jer. 7:4). The building is not the faith that it symbolizes and rebuilding must reflect the dedication to seeing that justice and mercy prevail to make the symbol tell the truth! AMEN