Bishop Ronald M. Gilmore’s homily

In paging through your history last week, I was struck to see how much time was spent in the very building of your churches. By my count, eighteen years went into the first one (from the coming of the railroad to 1904), and a full twenty years went into this one. Much dreaming went into them, therefore, and much careful planning, and much laboring. Patient, methodical, church building is almost the theme of all these one hundred years. It is almost the unique signature of Immaculate Conception parish.

It is definitely the theme of today's first reading. St. Peter urges us to come to Christ, a Living Stone. His words fit well into the rich rock imagery of the Bible, for they too suggest the literal hardness of stone, the stable and secure support it provides, the immoveable foundation it is, the refuge and safety of it. All of this is in Peter's term, but there is even more. His image is a particularly complex one.

The original thought may have been of a cornerstone, or it may have been of a keystone over a door. What is clear is that this is the very stone that holds the building together. Nothing else will fit together without it. Nothing will stand without it. It is the life- giving and essential stone in the building. It is the building-making stone.

But there is more. If you remember that this letter was written for the newly baptized, you can see that Peter is thinking of the stone the new Christians were to approach after their baptism, namely, the altar .Our altars have been considered symbols of Christ from the very beginning, the Christ who gave himself for us in the sacrifice of the cross, and the Christ who continues to give himself to us under the forms of bread and wine.

But he is not yet finished. Peter extends the illustration to the Christians themselves. The new Christians are themselves to be living stones, taking on the characteristics of the Living Stone. They are to allow themselves to be built into a spiritual house. They are to cooperate with him in making a spiritual home.

The Church is not made up of individuals who are cold and dead. It is made up of persons who enrich their environment with live-giving love. That makes it a sheltering place, a comforting place, a creating place. Slowly, carefully, stone is laid upon stone, person comes together with person to build a place of familiarity and intimacy, a place that refreshes and renews, a place that permits each to be most himself or herself.

There is an outer church-building, Peter suggests, and an inner church-building. Sometimes they both go on at the same time. The last goes on all the time. We gather today to remember and to give thanks for both.

• We remember and give thanks for those pastors and religious and families who were taken up with outer church-building: the Fathers Joyce, and Rice, and Hayden, and Schmidt; the Sisters Isidore, Josephine, and Anastasia; the Carey's and Moran's, and Dondlinger's, and Miller's, and Bieberle's, and all the others whose names are written in the Claflin Holy Book.

• We remember and give thanks for those pastors and religious and families who have devoted themselves to the inner church-building, the secret effort to allow Christ in work in them and through them that they might become a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart: the Fathers Bahr and Maes; the Sisters Catherine Therese and Renee; and the families who gather around them to hand on what they have seen and heard of God.

As we remember them, I would have you imitate them. Resolve to be Church-Builders as they were. Be patient with the work. Take your time at it. Dream it deeply. Plan it carefully. Do it skillfully. And in another hundred years, those who replace us will look back on a most satisfying thing: on person appealing to person, on one, two, and three gathered in his name, on a communion of faith, hope, and love, on a community after the mind and heart of Jesus himself. So it has been in Claflin, so it will be.