My heart goes out to all those who are rebuilding homes and lives after recent hurricanes. It is so much harder to rebuild than it was to build the first time. There is something wonderful about starting a new building project. You have plans, dreams, and visions of what you will do in this place you are building. The wood smells new. The ground is bare. You see the wonder of construction. Something is now where something wasn’t. There is a smile in every nail and board.
But when you rebuild, there is the matter that you remember what it was like before. You see what it is like now that flood or fire or wind has passed through. Old and new mix as you deal with damage. You grieve. Every stone piled on stone has tears on it.
That is true whether you rebuild your home after a hurricane, your life after an addiction, your family after a time of infidelity, or your part of the Kingdom of God . Rebuilding is a task of tears.
Haggai Says “Rebuild for God First”
Today’s first reading comes from the very short book of Haggai. Haggai was a prophet of the time of the Jews’ return from exile in Babylon. When he writes in 520 BCE, the people have been back in Jerusalem 18 years. When they returned, one of the first things they did was start to rebuild the temple. But then they disagreed, building was put on a long pause, and the people rebuilt their homes and shops instead.
The sequence of the readings is a bit confusing this week. Monday we heard King Cyrus issue the decree that let the Jews return to Judah. Tuesday the reading from Ezra told of the temple’s completion and dedication in 515 BCE. Wednesday another selection from Ezra told of the breakdown in reconstruction that Haggai is prophesying about today.
Haggai names the situation: “This people says: ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD.’ God asks through Haggai: “Is it time for you to dwell in your own paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?”
The solution, “Go up into the hill country; bring timber, and build the house that I may take pleasure in it
and receive my glory,” says the LORD.
Building and Rebuilding God’s House Today
From what I hear, the Kingdom of God is being built in Africa. There is the enthusiasm, the seeking, the dedication, the joy of discovering the joy of the Gospel and what it means that God came as Jesus, God conquered evil, sin, and death through Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection, and God now lives in his people through the Holy Spirit. A friend from Nigeria shows me videos of preaching to great crowds who come early in the morning and stay all day to learn about and love the Lord. I hear other similar stories from across the African continent. There is all the passion and commitment of the early years of the Church. There is the very real persecution of the Church and Christians, too. God and his people are building in Africa.
I hear the stories and often read the comments from A Catholic Moment readers from Africa, and I wish I were there. I would love to be in the middle of that building of the Kingdom.
But God put me here in the US where the task is to rebuild the Kingdom—to rebuild Catholic and Christian culture in a nation where Sundays are not a day to rest with family and worship in community, where most families encounter violence, addiction, or divorce within their lifespan, where public policies of both political parties are mixtures of conformity to Christian teaching and defiance of it, where the abortion rate remains close to a million children a year, and where the “living wills” common in almost every hospital encourage people to think of dying in ways outside Christian teaching about the sanctity of human life.
It is a daunting task. Like rebuilding after a hurricane. Like rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem after the exile.
Gaudium et Spes
Our prayer group is currently studying papal documents that center around the Vatican II constitution, Gaudium et Spes. This is the Vatican II document that names how we as Church are to engage with the non-Christian world around us. It specifically names six problems of our age and calls on us as Church to confront these problems by intentionally and actively living the Gospel in the middle of our not-so-Christian world: marriage and family, human culture in a world of atheism and pluralism, economic life, political life, solidarity of peoples, and world peace.
Our Church teaches that God speaks clearly through what popes and councils speak in unison. The sixteen documents of Vatican II are revelation at that level. They are God’s direction to all of us. We can and should trust them to guide us.
Gaudium et Spes begins:
- The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community composed of men. United in Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in their journey to the Kingdom of their Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for every man. That is why this community realizes that it is truly linked with mankind and its history by the deepest of bonds.
For the entire document (in many languages) go here on the Vatican website.
What God Asks of Us
This week we are also studying a lesser known Vatican II document, Apostolicam actuositatem, the Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People.
Both these documents are very clear: the task of building or rebuilding the Kingdom of God and thus changing the world is our job—the job of us ordinary, in the pew, Catholics. (See especially Paragraph 4)
Making this Personal: God’s Call to Me
In all of this, God is working on me. We Catholics believe that conversion is a repetitive process. God gives us new Truth, additional Grace, and patient guidance to bring us throughout our lifetimes closer and closer to him.
I’m in the middle of a round of conversion. I intended to retire the end of May. Through the past several years I have prepared myself to work now for the Church with a pastoral theology decree. I thought I had done my work in the secular world. It was time for me to work within the bosom of the Church—writing some, teaching some, working with people struggling with faith, bringing communion and community to some of our homebound, praying with my friends.
I am doing those church things—and enjoying them. But, without advertising, I have more clients as a marriage and family therapist than I have ever had. My work with the homebound leads me to confront the way our culture treats the elderly, how medical care treats the dying, and how we in community too easily forget those who are home alone. I want to write and teach about scripture and holiness, but there is more need for me to write and teach about creating a culture of life that includes elderly and dying within the larger Christian and Catholic community. There is still great need for teaching people skills for loving each other in families.
Rebuild My Kingdom
Reading Vatican II documents now I sense “Rebuild my Kingdom”—in church AND larger community is what God asks—of me, maybe also of you, maybe ALL of us.
I think of the lines from Haggai today, Consider your ways! You have sown much, but have brought in little; you have eaten, but have not been satisfied; You have drunk, but have not been exhilarated; have clothed yourselves, but not been warmed; And whoever earned wages earned them for a bag with holes in it.
Ouch! Is perhaps a reason too many churches are emptying is that we are too busy staying within our walls and preserving Catholic identity, rather than going out to rebuild God’s Kingdom where his people need us? We have God’s request—in print from Vatican II and from literally every pope for the past 125 years.
What are we waiting for? What am I waiting for?
Prayer:
Lead me, Lord, guide me. Lead and guide each reader today. This world is a mess. Your message is clear. You call us to interact with it and bring you to it. How do you want me to do it today, Lord? In today’s Gospel, Herod took note of Jesus. Jesus intrigued him. Lead me to intrigue the secular world today by how I live my faith and my life. Amen
