All
right. I confess: I, too, have been taken over by Popesteria, a disorder I would define as
a complete and total fixation on the words, actions, and teachings of Pope
Francis. Popesteria always carries
with it a fair amount of denial. For days on end I told myself that I could not
be bothered to stand with 11,000 people on the White House lawn for three hours
waiting for his holiness to arrive. Then on Tuesday I said to Kathy, “Well, I
might as well pick up my ticket just in case.” And then on Wednesday morning,
at 5:30 a.m., I found myself walking down to the White House and then milling
around with the gigantic crowd until the ceremony started almost four hours
later. It doesn’t matter that I could neither see Pope Francis nor even hear
him very well. When you suffer from Popesteria
you take what you can get. It was enough just to be in roughly the same zip
code with the man.
I
confess to having Popesteria even
though I am probably the most jaded person there is when it comes to being
around famous people. There are very few celebrities I would walk around the
block to see. But Pope Francis is something else. He’s an actual Christian person who has
somehow found himself leading the world’s largest church. His personal authenticity, his intellectual
and theological depth, his obvious empathy and compassion—all of these traits
combine to make him an inviting face for the gospel in the 21st
century. And from what I’ve seen of the coverage of his visit, I know his trip
to America has been as transformative for our nation as it has been for me and
my fellow popestericals.
We respond so
powerfully to Pope Francis because he incarnates our highest aspirations and
deepest values. It’s not only that he articulates the faithful Christian
response to the world’s besetting social problems; it’s also that he lives the
way all of us who follow Jesus aspire to live. He takes the gospel seriously.
He actually does what Jesus advises us to do—living not only simply and
generously but also joyfully and expansively. He treats both individuals and
classes of people as bearers of God’s image in the world. Listen again to his
words to Congress last Wednesday about how we together might respond to the
crises plaguing today’s world:
Our
response must instead be one of hope and healing, of peace and justice. We are
asked to summon the courage and the intelligence to resolve today’s many
geopolitical and economic crises. Even in the developed world, the effects of
unjust structures and actions are all too apparent. Our efforts must aim at
restoring hope, righting wrongs, maintaining commitments, and thus promoting
the well-being of individuals and of peoples. We must move forward together, as
one, in a renewed spirit of fraternity and solidarity, cooperating generously
for the common good. [Pope Francis Address to Congress, September 24, 2015]
By his very being,
Pope Francis is teaching us what it means to be a Christian person. Now I’m
spending all this time talking about him not to imitate a high school book
report but as a way into saying something about Cathedral Day. Once a year, on
the last Sunday in September, we here at Washington National Cathedral pause to
observe the founding of this cathedral on September 29, 1907, and we take the
occasion to think together about what a place like this is for. In a world of
gross inequality and suffering—not to mention selfies, snapchat, and the
Kardashians—what possible meaning can a gothic edifice like this have? It seems
to me that the answer to that question lies not in a set of ideas but in a
person. Pope Francis tells us not only what it means to be a Christian human
being. He shows us what it means to be a
Christian church, and by extension, a Christian cathedral.
On Cathedral Day we
always read the gospel account [Matthew
21:12-16]: of Jesus entering the Jerusalem temple and casting out the money-changers.
As Matthew tells it,
Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were
selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the
money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, ‘It is
written,
“My house shall be called a house of prayer”;
but you are making it a den of robbers.’ [Matthew 21: 12-13]
“My house shall be called a house of prayer”;
but you are making it a den of robbers.’ [Matthew 21: 12-13]
When Jesus tells us that we are turning a
house of prayer into a house of thieves, we usually infer that he is
criticizing commercial transactions. (Given
that Washington National Cathedral has a store, a café, and that we charge for
admission, reading Jesus’s words as a proscription on any money changing hands would
be very bad news for us indeed.) But the word Matthew uses is the Greek word lēstēs which in English really means something
more like “brigand”. A brigand is not
only a thief: a brigand is part of a gang which lives by looting and pillage. Translation:
Jesus implies that by institutionalizing and commodifying sacred transactions,
the money-changers are hijacking the mission of the temple itself. It’s not so much that selling doves for
sacrifice sullies the holiness of the place; it’s rather that the entire temple
system of sacrifice which presumes to guarantee holiness has become a
caricature of what the life of faith is really all about. As the prophet Hosea
reminds us [Hosea 6:6], God desires “mercy, not sacrifice”. In promoting a culture of worship
disconnected from human need, the temple system has bought into the false idea
that one can pray to God while ignoring human suffering. The temple has become
an impediment to the life of prayer.
So Cathedral Day, if it means anything,
recalls us to what the mission of a place like this is all about. Are we called to be a beautiful edifice where
prayers are said flowers are arranged, and beautiful music is heard, or are we
called to be something more? Who, if we are honest with ourselves, are the real
money-changers in this temple? By serving a vision of holiness disconnected
from the pains and injustices of the world, how are we hijacking the gospel mission
of a house of prayer?
We get some help
in answering this question in the same address Pope Francis gave to Congress.
In that speech, his holiness cited four exemplary Americans—only two of them Roman
Catholics. Abraham Lincoln, our 16th
president, and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Civil Rights leader are
well-known. The two others are less
familiar to most of us. Dorothy Day
founded the Catholic Worker Movement and spent her life working among and for
the poor. Thomas Merton was a Cistercian
monk who wrote about prayer and its connection to the issues of the day. In his
summative words to Congress, Pope Francis said this:
A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as
Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to “dream” of full
rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do;
when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did
by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows
peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton. [Pope Francis
Address to Congress, September 24, 2015]
Defending liberty,
establishing rights, striving for justice, sowing peace: these are the marks of
a great nation. They are also the marks
of a great cathedral, particularly one that calls itself the “spiritual home of
the nation”. In aspiring to be the
nation’s church, do we not thereby seek to embody America’s highest national
affirmations? We cannot stand for both gospel truth and American values simply
by being beautiful. If we are to be a “house of prayer” in the way that Jesus
means it, we must embody the commitments of the four Americans Pope Francis
cited in his speech. We must work for the freedom of all. We must stand for the
rights of all. We must agitate for justice, especially in regard to poverty and
race. We must work for peace not only
internationally but in our city streets. As beautiful as it is, a building like
this is a sentimental fantasy if all we do here is bury presidents, welcome
tourists, or applaud ourselves for being a national treasure. A cathedral lives
out its holiness not only by being pious. A cathedral lives out its holiness by
standing with and for the people God cares most about: the poor, the sick, the grieving, the
oppressed, the prisoners, the hungry, the lonely, the lost. The beauty of a
place like this does not consist primarily in its stained glass, its wrought
iron, or its carvings. The beauty of a place like this shines forth from what
it stands for.
As an American, I
will always be grateful to Pope Francis for his visit among us, recalling us to
our essential vision of ourselves as a nation. As a Christian, I will likewise
be grateful for his life as a constant reminder of what it means really to
follow Jesus. On this Cathedral Day, let all of us who love and serve
Washington National Cathedral rededicate ourselves to the vision of a holy
place aspiring to be not only a “house of prayer” but also a house of justice. May our piety shine forth both in prayer and in
action. May our love for God shine forth not only from this building but in lives
dedicated to defending liberty, establishing rights, striving for justice, and sowing
peace. Amen.
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