In Missouri, we can build a culture that allows others to have life and have it abundantly
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
In this week’s Office of Readings, the prophet Haggai talks about how Zerubbabel rebuilt the temple, the prophet Zechariah talks about the rebuilding of the temple and the city of Jerusalem, the prophets Zechariah and Malachi talk about how the Lord would come to dwell in the city and the temple and St. Cyril of Alexandria — in a commentary on Haggai — talks about Christ as the temple. Everybody’s talking about building!
The twin questions “What are we building?” and “How are we building?” are the major themes of Pope Leo’s first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas.” The encyclical is governed by two images.
First is the image of the Tower of Babel. The Holy Father says this project “reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from self-affirmation, sacrifices human dignity for efficiency and aspires to reach heaven without God’s blessing.” The problem is not only what they are building, but how they are building it. It is “a project conceived without reference to God.”
The second image is the rebuilding of the ruined walls of Jerusalem by Nehemiah after the Babylonian Exile. The Holy Father describes that project this way: “Nehemiah heard the cry of a devastated city, brought that pain to prayer, discerned before God, asked for help, received permission to return, organized the work, confronted internal and external resistance and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem with the assistance of the people, brick by brick.” Both what he is building and how he is building it are under God’s care.
Then, in a stunning phrase — one of many in the document — Pope Leo says: “The construction of Babel or the rebuilding of Jerusalem begins within each one of us.”
What are we building, and how are we building it? I’d like to propose two points of reflection on those questions.
First, we celebrate the feast of St. Teresa of Avila this week — one of the three Carmelite doctors of the Church. All Carmelites harken back to the prophet Elijah and how he called down the fire of God on Mount Carmel. All Carmelites enter religious life to ask the fire of God to fall upon them and through them fall upon the world again. What they are building is a human heart fit to receive and transmit the fire of God. There’s a lesson for all of us! We don’t need to do that they way a Carmelite does. But each of us can find our own way of building a heart ready to receive the fire of God.
Second, as we prepare to vote on Amendment 3, one way of approaching it is to ask: What kind of society are we building?
Quite frankly, in America, we have a history of building our freedom and prosperity on the backs of those who have no voice. We built prosperity with the labor of enslaved people. We built prosperity on the lands of Native Americans. It’s hard not to see how we continue to build prosperity on the sacrificed lives of the unborn. But if we insist that everything in our society must be arranged around the right to kill our own children, what kind of society are we building?
So, I urge a “Yes” vote on Amendment 3, because it says: “Yes, we will build a culture that protects the vulnerable. Yes, we will build a culture that gives a voice to the voiceless. Yes, we will build a culture that asks something of us, so that others might have life and have it abundantly.” That’s worth building together.
