I had the very good fortune to spend Holy Week in the Eternal City this year, visiting with a group of students for the “UNIV Congress” – an annual Holy Week event in Rome for university students who are receiving formation in centres of Opus Dei. I’ve been on this trip a good few times by now, but for me it never grows stale; I suspect this is the case because it never fails to provide a unique experience of the mystery of the Church itself. Somehow during this week in Rome those four mysterious marks of the Church: its oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity become manifest in a particularly vibrant manner. Her essential qualities seem to shine out through the art, music, and the liturgy of the Church and through the pilgrims themselves. A girl on a previous UNIV trip described to me “an epiphany” of the Church she had had during Easter Sunday Mass in St Peter’s Square: during the Pope’s homily she had looked around her and been struck by all the various ears she could see with their variety of shapes, colours, and ages – all listening intently to the words of one elderly man, the Pope! She saw in this a revelation of the Church itself with its huge diversity centred on the visible point of union, the Holy Father.
It is in Rome, and during Holy Week in particular when pilgrims from all around the world are drawn to the Rome, that the “accidents” of the Church seem to fall away: its temporality, its spatiality, and even the defective nature of its members. As one passes from the catacombs – those humble excavations in the tufa of subterranean Rome with their primitive frescoes and carvings, to some of the most magnificent buildings the world has ever seen, you realise that the exact same spirit permeates both. The vast beauty of Michelangelo’s Renaissance dome of St Peter’s basilica takes your breath away, and yet for all that it is in continuity with the slightly faded, humble images of Bible scenes painted on the catacomb walls by anonymous artists of the first years of Christianity. Space like time also fades away there. Pale northern Europeans, dark Hispanics, sallow Asians and ebony Africans, all with their myriad of different languages and national traits (and personal defects) are united there, consummati in unum.
While queueing to enter St Peter’s basilica for the Easter Vigil Mass, I was talking to a young Japanese girl who had come to Rome with a group of UNIV students. A year earlier she had known virtually nothing of the Faith but was so struck by the beauty of St Peter’s basilica on the one hand, and the cheerfulness of Christians on the other hand, that she was certain of one thing about Catholicism: that she wanted to be part of it. Here she was again a year later, queueing to enter that same basilica, and surrounded by a cheerful laughing crowd of fellow queuers; the only difference being that this time she was queuing as a Catholic having been baptised last December. She kept repeating: “How lucky I am to be a Catholic!” The Eucharist in particular was something which caused her particular delight: “I cannot get my head around it” she told me. (In fact she told me that soon after converting she encountered an “ex-Methodist” who when she heard that this girl had converted simply said: “So you discovered the Eucharist then.”). A few hours later, as the Easter Vigil ended I was conversing with another Dublin priest who had ended up sitting next to me. As the trumpets played the jubilant finale he said to me virtually the same thing I’d heard earlier in the queue: “How fortunate we are to be Catholics!” And it did strike me that we were being treated to a beautiful glimpse of the splendour of the Church herself; through the soaring vault over Bernini’s baldaquino, through the stirring music, the nearby presence of the successor of Peter and the joy of the faith which pervaded the whole basilica.
Clearly the Church is a wonderful mystery, a mysterium magnum, and we should not be so surprised nor put out when those who do not share the faith exhibit no real understanding of the great mystery which is the Church. Perhaps the depth of ignorance regarding Church matters is baffling. I’m thinking of the recent report in the New York Times that a priest had managed to removed “the statue of Jesus” from the burning Notre Dame cathedral; he had been told that a priest had rescued the Eucharist from the Church – the body of Christ – for him: a statue! Indeed in the reporting of the burning of the roof of Notre Dame the media in many cases exhibited a tone-deafness (perhaps a voluntary tone-deafness) to the religious dimension and significance of the cathedral. And despite all that it was very clear that the shock generated by the images of the burning roof and falling spire were not the shock of people witnessing a museum on fire; it was something deeper felt than that. It seemed to me that the shock came from a latent nostalgia for the Catholic world. It seemed to resonate from a personal connection with that building; with the woman it honoured and the Christ it housed.
Perhaps too we shouldn’t bee surprised that this Church, the mystery of God’s dwelling with mankind, should also at times stir up a truly visceral and diabolical hatred (in the strict sense of the word) of the kind we saw unleashed on hundreds of poor Sri Lankan Christians early on Easter Sunday morning. The devil is far from tone-deaf to the reality of the Catholic Church – he sees clearly that it is the mystery of the Risen Christ still present among his people. Christ having died and risen cannot die again, but it is clear that the forces of evil will try to ensure that Christ dies again in the members of his mystical body.
To the degree that we feel ourselves part of that mystical body we will not be indifferent to events such as the fire in Notre Dame or the bombings in Sri Lanka. St Paul himself urged us to rejoice and suffers in the joys and sufferings of one another within the Church:
“… that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it” (1 Cor. 12: 25-16).
We can apply that advice to our concern and prayer for our suffering brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka during these very sad days. And at the same time, despite the often terrible sufferings of members of the Church throughout the world at any given moment – sufferings we should share in – there is also the experience of the joy – the great good fortune – we should feel, that God has deigned to call us to form part of his mystical body, the Church.