The dedication of a church means it is given over to the worship of God. We ourselves were dedicated to worship Him when we were baptized and confirmed. But the initiative in worship is not ours, it’s God’s. We don’t know how to worship as we ought. It is God who showed us how to worship Him by sending His own Son to die for our sins and rise for our justification. The supreme act of worship is the sacrifice of the Cross. We have the immense grace of sharing in that sacrifice through our conscious participation in the Mass. At Mass, Jesus associates us with Himself in His eternal worship of the Father in the Holy Spirit.

For our part, we do bring to Mass our own sacrifices of love and place them in the chalice and on the paten. Jesus gives them infinite value by uniting them with His own sacrifice. In response, the Father welcomes us into holy communion with the Trinity through the sacrament of the Eucharist. There is no single more important event on the face of the earth or in history than the sacrifice of the Mass. There is no single event which benefits human beings more. For us baptized, there ought to be no greater desire or commitment than full and active participation in the Mass. It is the source and summit of the life of the Church. Without the Mass, the Church of Christ would not exist, not as God intended it.

The Mass existed before any church building. Until the Roman Emperor Constantine, Western Christians lived in the catacombs. With the Edict of Milan in 313, Constantine gave religious tolerance to Christianity and, by 324, built the first and oldest of the four papal basilicas in Rome, St. John Lateran’s. After it was dedicated by Pope Sylvester I, the Mass could now be celebrated in a building dedicated for that purpose. But whether in the catacombs or in people’s homes or in a grand basilica or in Auschwitz or on a mountain top, the Mass is always building up the people of God, the Body of Christ, the living Church and Temple of God. And it will continue to do so until the end of time.

When the prophet Ezekiel envisions water streaming out from the Temple in Jerusalem bringing freshness and teeming life to the rivers and seas and causing trees to bear fruit every month with medicinal leaves, He is speaking of the sacrifice of the Cross. The water and blood from the side of Christ, the living Temple of God, are the source of sacramental life in the Church. They proceed from Jesus’ self-sacrificing love and worship of the Father which is the underlying, hidden reality behind the signs and rites of the Mass. It is here at Mass that we receive the fresh waters of grace and truth, that we find cleansing from sin, healing and the food of eternal life. Yes, we can receive streams from this torrent outside of Mass in prayer, in reading and reflecting on the Word of God, in the love of others, in the beauty of nature, in our labours for justice and peace. But these, too, find their source and their power in the sacrifice of the Mass, for all grace and holiness come from the Cross.

This parish church of St. Mary’s was dedicated at its opening in 1961 (Millport, 1958). In continuity with the previous building, it has housed the sacrifice of the Mass for over 64 years (67 for Millport). It’s hard to calculate the benefits of grace which have flowed like the stream in the Temple from this altar. While we can’t see into the future, we can dare to hope that it will continue to be a source of grace for you, God’s holy people, and for the surrounding locality for many decades to come. But let’s say that doesn’t happen. Let’s say this church is closed. What happens then to the remnant of the Catholic people of God left in these towns? Let’s dare to hope again that you are not forced back into the catacombs. Let’s presume you will be tolerated, at least. Where, then, is the Mass to be celebrated if a priest should be able to be here once in a blue moon? The answer is surely in your homes. As it was in the early Church, the sacrifice of the Mass will be celebrated in what Vatican II calls the domestic church, the Catholic home.

And this touches on a very important question. The domestic church comes before the parish church. A parish will be as strong as its domestic churches, as its marriages and families with their life of shared prayer, of faith, hope and love. This holds true, too, for people who live alone but who honour God in their homes. The parish has been described as a family of families. The family brings its life of prayer, love, sacrifice and all other virtues to the Mass on Sunday. Christ takes all that they bring in faith and makes it His own. By word and sacrament, the family is in turn strengthened in its identity as a domestic church and returns home. This lifegiving circle between family and parish dedicates families more and more to God and this in turn dedicates the parish community more and more to God.

Let me share with you a story. To a remote part of Siberia where a thriving Catholic community once lived, the Catholic Archbishop of Moscow, newly ordained after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, travelled in terrible conditions to see if any remnant of that community was still to be found. The last leg of his journey had to be made by horse. When he arrived in the area where the church building of the parish had once been, he couldn’t see much due to a blizzard. Eventually, he saw a crowd of older people huddled together. He got down form his horse and an old lady came to greet him. He put out his hand, but she knelt down in the snow and kissed his feet. Then she said to him, “in you I kiss the feet of Christ.” What had kept their hopes alive that a priest would come to them was that they prayed the rosary in their homes every day. From 1917 to 1991 the domestic church prayed and hoped for Christ the priest to return. And he did.

I invite you to dedicate or rededicate your home today as a domestic church, as a place where Christ is welcome and at home, where His love and compassion, His Truth and His Grace find easy entry. We allow so many strangers, and sometimes, enemies of our home such easy entrance through multimedia and through an unhealthy curiosity for things and lifestyles which sadden the Holy Spirit and weaken the moral and religious fabric of our marriages, families and homes. How can a home welcome Christ if material pursuits are given priority over the soul, if there is a tolerance of bad habits and language? In my life as a priest, I have been called out by families who are scared because of the presence of evil they feel in their homes. It doesn’t take long to find out that someone in the home has been dabbling with the occult, with ouija boards, tarot cards and other such things; or that someone has been looking at pornography on a regular basis. But why let these things into a home in the first place? What is this nostalgia for evil rather than for good and for God? All these things do is alienate us from God and from one another, ending up in family and marriage breakdown, never mind the collapse of mental health.

If instead we recover the sense of our home as a sacred space, the presence of the Lord will bring much peace, joy, healthy laughter and godly prosperity. If the centre of the day is our prayer together and the centre of our week is Sunday Mass, then the centre of our hearts and our homes will be filled with Christ, the hope of eternity. So, be inventive, be creative, be courageous and today rededicate your marriages, families and home to God!