Dedication of Resurrection Church
Ellicott City
May 17, 2024
A Season of Resurrection
This period between Ascension and Pentecost marks the final days of the Season of Easter, that fifty-day period when the Church joyfully celebrates the Resurrection. In a sense, we are re-living the first days of the Church’s life when the Risen Lord appeared to the disciples – the same Lord in his human body marked by the wounds of his Passion, yet now clothed with a glory that words could not adequately describe.
As the Risen Lord appeared to his disciples, he opened their minds to the understanding of Scripture; he manifested himself in the breaking of bread; he breathed his Spirit upon them, giving them power to forgive sins; and he sent them forth to bring the Good News of Redemption, to Jerusalem and Judea, and indeed to the ends of the earth.
With the coming of the Holy Spirit, the first disciples realized that Jesus had not only conquered sin and death but that he opened the door for a profound renewal of humanity. He opened the door to what we might call a transfigured way of life, a fresh spiritual way of thinking, a way of acting that reflects divine love, a way of being in the world and not of the world, a way of life that reflects friendship with God and communion with one another in the Body of Christ. So taken were the disciples by the Holy Spirit that they could not restrain themselves from bearing witness to the Risen Lord, even when it put them in harm’s way and ultimately led to their martyrdom. As one of the Easter Prefaces puts it, “…with the old order destroyed, a universe cast down is renewed, and integrity of life is restored to us in Christ.”
The Resurrection of Resurrection Church
As we look around us this evening at a worship space transformed, we can say that Resurrection Church has experienced a resurrection! It is the same space in which your community has worshipped for years, the same space which never quite hid its origins as a gym, the same space where you listened to the voice of Christ in Scripture, where many of you and your children were baptized, confirmed, reconciled, and where all of you shared in the mystery of the Eucharist week after week. Yet, just as Jesus’ human body was transformed in the Resurrection, so too your church has undergone a beautiful transformation. More than a facelift, your parish church manifests a beauty that reflects in earthly terms something of the glory of the Resurrection, the very name by which you and your community of faith is known.
But you did not get to this point without undergoing the Cross! This process, from inception to completion was a kind of paschal mystery, a journey from life at used to be, to the decision to renew church, through the challenges of fundraising, the pain of demolition, the agony of delays and price-hikes, not to mention the exile of worshipping in a tent in weather hot and cold. Through it all, your parish community was guided by the steady and able leadership of your pastor, Msgr. Dietzenbach, and let us express to him our profound gratitude! In the same breath, let us express our united thanks to lay leaders whose unstinting efforts led to the beauty we see all around us. We are also grateful to the architects and builders, as well as to archdiocesan personnel who helped guide this project. And I am grateful to all of you for your generosity, your perseverance, and your love for the Lord and your Catholic faith, expressed in this church which today, we consecrate and re-dedicate.
Our Resurrection
The renewal of this church is indeed more than a facelift, more than the expansion and decoration of a hall in which we gather. No, this beautifully transformed church speaks to us of the mysteries of redemption that will be celebrated here, for generations to come, God willing. It lifts our minds from things of earth to things of heaven, where the Risen Lord is seated at the Father’s right hand, pleading our cause as we celebrate the divine mysteries. Walking into this church, we realize more clearly than ever before, that the earthly liturgy is a foretaste and participation in the heavenly liturgy, where Christ, “the sacrificial Victim dies no more, [where] the Lamb once slain lives forever.”
What does that say to us as individual believers and as a community of faith? Does it not say that you and I come to this place so that Christ can lead us through the mysteries of his life, death, resurrection, and exaltation? Does it not call us to be inwardly transformed ourselves, to undergo, even amid our every day cares and anxieties, our own paschal mystery, our own death and resurrection, our own inward transformation? That transformation manifests itself in unswerving fidelity to the Lord and to his Church, in the integrity of our lives and in the generosity of our love, in the strength of family life, in the raising up of vocations, a transformation that manifests itself in our readiness, like those first disciples, to bear witness to our faith by word and work, to make disciples, and to bring to bear upon our broken world the glory of the Resurrection.
Conclusion
I joyfully congratulate you on this day of re-dedication and consecration, and as we await the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday, I join you in prayer, in this our upper room, for a fresh outpouring of the Spirit, such that Resurrection Parish will radiate far and wide the glory of God shining on the face of the Risen Christ, and may God bless you and keep you always in his love!