Altar Dedication Homily
Kiryat Yearim, August 31, 2024
1Chr 13:6-8; 16:1-2.4.8-9.34-36; Heb 9:11-24; Luke 1:26-38
Dear brothers and sisters,
may the Lord give you peace!
Let us thank the Lord together for this beautiful time of fraternity, of church gathering and joy. The reopening of a church after a long period of closure, the dedication of a new altar, the participation of the various faithful of our Church of the Holy Land in this event, are a tangible sign of a renewed commitment, they express the desire to continue our mission in the Holy Land, they are a sign of a new beginning, of rebirth, in a certain sense. It is therefore a moment of grace, a bright glimpse into the future for the life of our Church and our people. In this context of war, where everything seems to talk of closure and of end, it seems to me that it can be said that our Church today, here, in this place, also thanks to our Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition, is renewing her “yes” by uniting it to that of Mary, the Ark of the Covenant, and renewing her trust in the work of God, the Lord of history.
We are indeed in a place immersed in history, with significant biblical events that connect us to the Old Testament and to important events in salvation history. Before the Mass, the sisters also told us about the recent history of this holy place that brought them here to this mountain, and about the beginnings and development of their presence on this mountain.
I will therefore limit myself to reflecting on a single word that takes on a particular concreteness in this place and that is central to the entire history of the Old and New Testaments: the covenant.
In the first reading we read the episode of the introduction of the ark on this mountain. As we have seen, this is a solemn, decisive moment in the story of Revelation. The ark is the tangible sign of the covenant between God and His people. It contains the signs that marked the way of the people of Israel in the desert, such as the manna, and with which God made the covenant with Moses and his people on Mount Sinai, such as the Tablets of the Law.
The ark therefore contains everything that is constitutive of the identity of biblical Israel, namely the covenant, this special covenant between God and His people that began with Abraham and was renewed again and again from time to time. The ark is not only a sign of God's presence amid his people, but also of His faithfulness to the covenant, which is repeatedly put to the test by the many falls and deviations of His people.
The history of the covenant is indeed a history of faithfulness, waiting, patience, gratuitousness and love. Despite the minor and major betrayals of the people of Israel, despite the constant breaking of the covenant, God remains faithful and never ceases to renew his promise to accompany His people with his own presence, of which the ark is a sign. In the future, this sign will move to Jerusalem, which will become the only place of God’s presence.
In the course of biblical history, in short, God will not stop sending prophets to call everyone back to faithfulness to the covenant. Nor will he stop shouting at his people at times, but he will never break that covenant, He will never break His commitment. The unfaithfulness of the people does not extinguish God’s love for his people and for humanity. Indeed, this covenant is not just another legal contract. It is part of a great divine plan that, from creation to the present, expresses the desire of God, the Creator, for unity and love with humanity and all creation.
God is therefore faithful. He will not allow man’s unfaithfulness, or the many historical dramas reported in the Bible, to abolish this covenant. God’s faithfulness to the covenant is indeed a clear and powerful proof of God’s rule over history. Bible is indeed the history of human beings, but also the history of God, who intervenes in his own way and does not allow the covenant, i.e. his desire for unity and relationship with human beings, to be nullified by our sin.
Such desire for relationship and unity finds its fulfillment for us in Christ. In him, the presence of God among us is no longer a sign, a symbol, but real. He makes Himself present, and He, Himself, renews a universal covenant with Easter. “He is the mediator of a new covenant” (Heb. 9:15), as we heard in the second reading.
This new covenant was made possible by the “yes” of Mary of Nazareth. Her acceptance of the divine desire made God’s final intervention in history, the incarnation, possible. Mary, the ark of the covenant, is therefore the one who welcomed Christ into her womb and thus became the place of God’s presence. Through her obedience to the Father, the Virgin of Nazareth expressed her trust in God’s action, in His providence, without being intimidated by the circumstances of the moment, but by entrusting herself entirely to God. Her obedience gave concrete form to the words of the angel, “nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).
Mary teaches us to have faith. Faith means recognizing that the invisible hand of God is still at work and reaches right there where man cannot reach. Faith also means standing in this difficult and dramatic situation of today with Christian hope. May the difficulties of the present moment, this war that seems to extinguish all hope and destroy trust in man, the disorientation that accompanies us, not destroy our firm certainty that God does not abandon those who love him, that we are not alone, and that God guides history.
Mary also teaches us to enter the time of gestation, a time of patience, silence and waiting. The things of man are done in an instant, the things of God take time and come slowly: a long gestation is necessary for the new thing to be born. We no longer know how to wait; the fatigue of waiting for an immediate solution has tired us out. We want to control events, but instead they elude us and confuse us. Man consumes his time voraciously, while God's time unfolds over vast stretches: He digs deep, He lays deep foundations.
Mary’s pregnancy was equally nourished by patience, faith, silence, listening, praying and walking. And this led Mary to see and recognize the places and events around her where God’s own hand was doing something new: in her cousin Elizabeth (Lk 1:39-45), in her husband Joseph (Mt 1:18-25).
We do not understand everything today, we are not able to adequately interpret what is happening, and this is perhaps one of the elements that worries us the most: not being able to decipher and decode the dramatic present moment, to have the interpretative key that allows us to control current events, the present and the flow of endless violence, injustice and pain. But the certainty that nothing will separate us from God’s love, the security we derive from his faithfulness, cannot fail, and nothing, absolutely nothing and no one should ever separate us from God’s love. The dynamic of a God who wants to intervene in people’s lives is the dynamic of faith, of our daily relationship with God, which should not even be called into question by the drama of the present moment. Distrust, hopelessness are also a form of unfaithfulness to the covenant. Instead, let us renew here and now our filial obedience to God and renew our “yes”, our faith in the Lord of history.
For without this trust in God’s intervention, we would not have had saints and holy men and women who, without any means, only rich in trust in God, realized great works of evangelization. We would not have had people like Sister Josephine, or "Sister Chamomile" as she was called, who here, without resources, amid so many misunderstandings and difficulties of all kinds, created out of nothing this place that is being rededicated and reopened today.
The history of these people, who lived through times no better than our own (just think of the dramas of the First World War), encourages us to trust in God’s work and not to dwell on our pain, but to open ourselves with trust.
Let us ask the Virgin Mary for the gift of trust in God’s work in us and in the world. Faith in God will give us new life, just like the child who was born in the Virgin’s womb, just like the life that emerged from the tomb. There, too, the hand of man had brought death, and only the hand of God could restore life. And so it happened.
With Mary and with confidence let us trust once again in God’s plan.
