When Stones Speak
Simone Riva - The temple, our churches, are the welcoming shell of our relationship with Christ, but they cannot replace our affection for Him.
First there were houses and catacombs, then about forty churches, and finally the project for a basilica, built thanks to Emperor Constantine and dedicated in 324 by Pope Sylvester I to the Most Holy Savior and by subsequent popes to St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist: St. John Lateran. The “Mother of all churches” became the residence of the popes, a place of elections and councils, the cathedral of Rome, and the oldest cathedral in all of Christendom. Today we celebrate that first dedication.
Yet, almost two hundred years earlier, during the trial of the philosopher Justin, we find the following recorded: "The prefect Rusticus asked, 'Where do you meet?' Justin replied, ‘Wherever each one can and prefers; you believe that we all meet in one place, but this is not so because the God of Christians, who is invisible, cannot be confined to any place, but fills heaven and earth and is worshipped and glorified everywhere by his faithful’" (Acts of the Martyrdom of St. Justin and Companions).
In the Gospel itself, we note a sort of impatience on the part of Christ with the fixity derived from a certain way of conceiving the place of worship: “While some were talking about the temple and the beautiful stones and the votive gifts that adorned it, he said, ‘The days will come when, of all that you admire, not one stone will be left upon another that will not be destroyed’” (Lk 21:5-6).
What need was there, then, for stones if, as the true place of God's presence and encounter with Him, the Trinity had chosen the humanity of the Son? The urgency was determined by the need for a place where the Liturgy could be celebrated and the Christian community could gather, as the etymology of the term “church” (ekklesia: community, convocation) itself indicates. A place where everything would be a reminder of the method chosen by the Mystery to recur in human life.
There is one thing, however, that cannot be replaced by stones, art, or the temple: the way in which each person has decided to live their life. Under the same stones, in fact, in the same churches, men and women enter and leave who, although moved by the same convocation, may not be willing to share what is essential. People who use the need for community as an excuse to spare themselves the movement of their own hearts.
God, foreseeing this risk, decided to take everyone by surprise right from the start, as Pope Francis very effectively recalled: "When God wants to make all things new through his Son, he does not begin with the temple, but with the womb of a small and poor woman of his people. God's choice is extraordinary! He does not change history through powerful men in civil and religious institutions, but starting with women on the periphery of the empire, like Mary, and their barren wombs, like that of Elizabeth" (from the homily of January 1, 2020).
Whenever we are tempted to take refuge in structures, whether physical or mental, in well-ordered schemes approved by those in power, in unhealthy and self-serving relationships, in roles as men of the temple always seeking a place in the sun, it would do us good to look again at the stones of our temples. Not only to remind ourselves of Christ's words that nothing we build with our own hands will remain, but to fix our gaze on what they evoke: the incessant initiative of Another in our midst.
Like that elderly friend who, every week, before starting after-school activities with the children, enters the church in the early afternoon and, with a brisk step, heads towards the statue of the Madonna. She takes the time for a loud dialogue, which never ceases in her heart, and then she leaves, waiting to encounter the same Presence in the faces and unexpected circumstances of life, where her yes can become a possibility of generation for that of others.
Only in this way can even stones speak, and what makes the temple reasonable can sprout everywhere, as Fr. Giussani reminds us: "God's involvement in human life always takes place through a precise, carnal point in time and space, where the interference of the Mystery occurs. This is the idea of the temple. It is a matter of recognizing the method God has chosen to make himself known to man, the method of his mysterious and real initiative to establish a relationship with man.
And man, who surprisingly becomes aware of this by grace, can, in his freedom, respond to it, looking at that new beginning, not made by himself, that has happened to him and that reveals itself to be deeply corresponding to his needs and expectations" (Luigi Giussani, Il tempo e il tempio, Milan, BUR, 1995, pp. 5-6).
