Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
The places where I grew up are special to me: my boyhood home, my parish, my aunt’s house, the baseball stadium. All those places are special to me because of the precious gifts that I was given there: my life, my faith, my family, my friends, my personality, etc.
What places are special to God? Where does God dwell? In heaven, of course, as Jesus Christ taught us when he taught us to pray: “Our Father who art in heaven.” Or, according to the prophecy to Isaiah “I dwell in the high and holy place” (Isaiah 57:15). There is no place on earth that is special to God the way that heaven is. Nevertheless, God does not scorn the earth, but, instead, reaches out to it. “Heaven is my throne; the earth is my footstool” (Acts 7:49). God makes certain places on earth special, too, by reaching down to them. For example, God commanded Moses to build a tent in which God himself would come to dwell, and “Moses did exactly as the Lord commanded him” (Exodus 40:16). Thus did the tent of Moses become a special place for God. In a similar fashion, by His incarnation, God made many places on earth special to Himself: everywhere that Jesus walked. Now that Christ has ascended back into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to fill the hearts of the Christian faithful, now it is the Christian shrines, churches and cathedrals that become special places for God. That is why The Spiritual Exercises remind us that “we ought to praise […] the building and adornment of churches” (SpEx 360), so that God’s glory might fill the earth just as it fills the heavens. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”