Moses hiked all the way up Mount Sinai. I merely sauntered across the courtyard outside our church building one recent Friday morning.
Both of us, incredibly, experienced the presence of God. The Triune God.
For Moses, the encounter emerged as if out of a fog bank: “Having come down in a cloud, the LORD stood with Moses there,” we hear in today’s first reading. In my case, a crystal clear sky provided the backdrop.
A blue sky…and about 38 years of immersion in a familiar scene. That’s how long I’ve been blessed to know this courtyard, this gathering space at the heart of my parish home.
I’ve marked deep friendship here, and overwhelming heartbreak. I’ve milled about the plaza for family celebrations – oh-so-many celebrations: baptisms, first communions, confirmations, graduations, marriages and ordinations!
This is the place where (for most of my adult life) the new fire of the Paschal Mystery has been ignited during Triduum liturgies. And where joyful cohorts of ACTS retreatants and teams have gathered in their Spirit-charged wonder just before their Return Mass.
Here, we’ve greeted and embraced three pastors…and associate pastors too numerous to name.
All that history, all that saga – and still (as I discovered on a recent morning) a courtyard with a simple beauty fresh and new to offer me. I didn’t have to go far, or make anything like the effort required of Moses on Mount Sinai, but there it was: our venerable bell tower, bathed in a gentle…tender…exquisite early-morning light.
Dawn at St. Joe’s, on a Friday morning – and not many others there to see it – this picture postcard from the Holy One.
Maybe, without my extensive history here, it’s difficult to see what I think I see in this image: a blessed assurance of Presence. Perhaps even profound trinitarian Mystery: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a bell for Each… bound together in a singular form of beauty.
And further mystery still: What is it about St. Joe’s? Why should we – why should I – be visited with such an assurance, when so many other parishes in our Archdiocese will know mostly loss and disruption in the weeks and months to come? I don’t pretend to know the answer. But neither am I comfortable with the sentiment I’ve heard expressed many times in recent days: “Nothing has changed,” I’ve been told by more than a few fellow parishioners. But one need only look at the St. Louis Review this week, with its five full pages of clergy appointments, to understand that change – perhaps disruptive change – is afoot.
Difficult questions will need to be answered, I expect. Painful choices will need to be made. Even so, by the dawn’s early light, I believe we can find something like reason for our hope.
We see something of God here, in the quiet beauty. And such an encounter gives us confidence to join our prayer to that of Moses: “If [we] find favor with you, O Lord, [then] do come along in our company.”
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 