“The Lord, the God of heaven, […] has charged me to build a house for Him in Jerusalem, in Judah.”
“Whoever among you is part of His people, may his God be with him, let him go up to Jerusalem, in Judah, and build the house of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem. Wherever those who remain of Israel dwell, let the people provide them with help: give them money, gold, gifts in kind, livestock, and include voluntary offerings for the house of God which is in Jerusalem.” (see Ezra 1:1-6)
The Bishop is a builder. In his diocese, he is the chief Builder. What does he build? The House of God, the portion of the Church entrusted to him. He is the Father; he is also the Spouse. In the full sense of both words. That is why, when the Bishop dies, we say that the Church (his diocese, the Church of God present in that place) is widowed. That is why the Bishop wears a ring. That is also why the Bishop’s ring is kissed.
Building the local Church is his mission. He is the ordinary of the place, as they say. In him resides the fullness of the Priesthood; he is the successor, in a long line, of the Apostles. Responsible for the transmission of the faith, the faith from the beginning. It is the same faith.
What does it mean to build?
Sometimes building has been understood in a physical sense. That is entirely acceptable. When the Lord spoke to St Francis (who is not a Bishop, of course), He asked him to rebuild His Church, which was falling into ruin, and St Francis first believed that the Good Lord was speaking to him about a church building. One should read and meditate on the ritual of the dedication of a church, its interior walls, its Altar. That said, the true Temple is Christ, and our true dwelling is in heaven. The Word of God is clear on this. We have no fixed dwelling on earth. But that does not prevent us from honouring the Incarnation and the resurrection of the Flesh and, consequently, the transcendent value of our life on earth, for it is this life on earth that allows us to grow and reach maturity, “ripe” for eternal life! Moreover, our progress is never made alone. Our Christian life, our spiritual life, is not built as a solitary path! That would be a profound illusion. Christ revealed to us His true dimension: that He is an immense body. His mystical body, the total Christ, are fundamental, inescapable realities! One does not advance in spiritual life without discovering this dimension and without the real exercise of divine charity towards the members of Christ, current or potential members.
Note: In Genesis 2:22, when God makes Eve, the Hebrew verb used is בָּנָה (banah), which literally means “to build” or “to construct,” rather than בָּרָא (bara), which is the verb used for creation ex nihilo, or יָצַר (yatsar), which is often used for forming (as with Adam from the dust). The text says: “Then the Lord God made the rib which He had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man.” The “made” here is actually from banah, conveying the idea of building or constructing, as one would build a house. Mary is the New Eve, the Woman, the one who is “flesh of the flesh” and “bone of the bones” of the New Adam! God is her builder. She is taken from Jesus’ side on the Cross!
So we said that the Bishop is a builder. What does he build? The portion of the Church of God, the Church of the Lord, which is local, over the territory entrusted to him.
What does “build” mean? As I said above, one might think it concerns edifices, structures, organisation. And sometimes one thinks of governance in these terms. That is not wrong, but it comes second. This is also why Christianity long hesitated to build great temples, for the true Temple is Christ (see Hebrews, see the veil of the Temple that tears at the death of Christ, see also John 2. (Heb 13:14; Jn 2:19–21; Mt 26:61)). We are the Temple of Christ, we are the living tabernacles of God. You are the dwelling of the Spirit, you are the Body of Christ, says St Paul. This is also one of the profound meanings of Communion. We are the Body of Christ through Baptism, but also we are the Body of Christ through Communion with His Body. We increasingly become the Body of Christ. To be truly members of the Body of Christ. Christ is Head and Body, the Total Christ (Totus Christus) (St Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 90, 2: “Totus Christus, caput et corpus.”)
As St Augustine said: many are in the Church, but in fact are outside. And many are outside, and in fact are inside. This does not shatter our notion of the Church, but it highlights that things are not merely physical or purely mechanically sacramental! There is the necessity of worship “in Spirit and in Truth”. It is not about ticking a checklist. Cardinal Ratzinger, in various documents during the Pontificate of John Paul II, talking about the Church, spoke of the necessity of distinguishing the Kingdom (the spiritual dimension) and belonging to the Church (through Baptism), but only distinguishing, for they must be united and worked at constantly.
Let us return. The Bishop is a builder. He is the builder of the local portion of the Church entrusted to him. In communion, of course, with the Pope and his fellow Bishops.
Building the House of God. In the Middle Ages, Francis began by rebuilding a dilapidated church. But also, Bishops began by investing massively in men, architects, masons, glaziers, etc., to construct their cathedral, a symbol of their local church. To the highest, the largest, defying gravity and finding ways to build higher. All of this is an effort full of symbolism. But it had the virtue of gathering all the people of God around a project, local and colossal, which was thought to be of the dimension of God, of the Church of God. But who builds the Church? It is the Lord. It took us several centuries not to forget this dimension: it is God who builds the Church, and it is not by ticking a list of things to do that true evangelisation occurs. Certainly, one must evangelise, certainly one must catechise, certainly one must preach, teach, write, publish, study, certainly one must go to the monastery to pursue one’s search for God further. And that is why the Abbots had all the authority of a Bishop. They were building another dimension. The aim was no longer the grandeur of the cathedral or the university, but something else: the greatness of song, of praise, of the search for God, of depth.
How does God build the Church? At the image of Christ, certainly… but there is more…
The Second Vatican Council, when it reconsidered the Church, when it explained what the Church is (and indirectly spoke to us about construction), told us that Mary is there, that she is already what the Church wants to become. In this sense, she is the archetype of the Church, the model, the plan on which the Bishop must base himself to “imitate,” to do likewise… and yet, who is the author of Mary? Where does she come from? Who created her immaculate soul? Who made her, by anticipation, the first of the saved? Who made her the mother of the saved? It is God, it is Christ, it is the Holy Spirit, at the Cross. God is the unique architect, and Mary is His work, his true Bride and the Bishop must study this plan first to understand it deeply and subsequently follow God’s action so that the result is a divine work and not a pseudo-divine one.
The cathedral, the university, and even, it must be said, the monastery (which extended over lands), are human-divine works, but can one know to what extent there is human interference, human ignorance?
It would take many centuries for a John of the Cross to tell us to what extent construction is entirely divine. That it is God who must intervene after all our efforts to show us the true cathedral, His, the true university, the true monastery, the true hermitage. It was the glorious John of the Cross who had the mission of explaining God’s intervention to us! The true builder. And to tell us that this intervention does not occur at the beginning, at the Kerygma, or even during catechesis, or even in the study of Theology! He told us that it comes much later, years later. He showed us how God intervenes, acts, builds (See Dark Night of the Spirit).
The result is in the image of Mary, tells us Bl. Father Marie Eugène in his book I am a Daughter of the Church. The result is a son or a daughter of Mary, resembling her, like an “extension” of her!
The Council, when it wished to speak of the Church, spoke of Mary. It placed her before our eyes to say: here is the patron, here is the plan, here, dear Architects, is what you must build. Indirectly, the Council was telling us: be careful, do not mimic the Church; it must be in the image of Mary. The Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly states that Mary is the type of every believer, of every disciple of Christ (CCC §967–968). This was indirectly telling us: study Mary, for she is the way, the path. She journeyed in faith, receive her faith, receive her charity. John Paul II says in his Enciclical Letter Redemptoris Mater 28: “Mary’s faith, according to the Church’s apostolic witness, in some way continues to become the faith of the pilgrim People of God”. Look at her, for she is the anticipatory image of what you are meant to become. Remember that God is the architect; study His intervention in construction, when He enters your life in a new way, when He directly takes charge of the construction of your being. You have done a part; now you must let Him work, you must accept being moulded into Mary, become liquid in the Divine Mold to allow the Holy Spirit to do His work.
“The Council expresses this when it states in another passage that Mary “has gone before,” becoming “a model of the Church in the matter of faith, charity and perfect union with Christ.”13 This “going before” as a figure or model is in reference to the intimate mystery of the Church, as she actuates and accomplishes her own saving mission by uniting in herself-as Mary did-the qualities of mother and virgin. She is a virgin who “keeps whole and pure the fidelity she has pledged to her Spouse” and “becomes herself a mother,” for “she brings forth to a new and immortal life children who are conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of God.”” (John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, 5)
O builder, be attentive to the Plan! Be attentive to the means!
“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower; will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, all who see it will begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’” (Luke 14:28-30) What is at stake is first sitting down and studying the Tower, Mary, her height, her depth, her width. What is at stake is studying the science of construction in St. John of the Cross, St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, and Blessed Marie Eugène. To build a tower, high, high, and to build it from above… What is at stake is understanding how the Holy Spirit acts in Mary, in her spiritual life, in her relationship with God (for this, one can read the transforming union described by St John of the Cross, the last five stanzas of the Spiritual Canticle and the whole of Living Flame). What is also at stake is knowing how Mary, so to speak, “passes into us,” how her faith becomes ours, how her hope becomes ours, and how her charity becomes ours (see John Paul II and Montfort). O Builder, you cannot content yourself with saying: “Mary is our Mother”, without practically and theologically understanding what the “Spiritual Maternity” of Mary means. You can no longer content yourself with saying religiously, piously, devotionally: “Mary is the Mother of the Church” or simply closing your preaching by mentioning her! She is the Plan, she is the method, she is the content, she is every step, she is the first step: “first, sit down and estimate…”!
The Bishop of the Middle Ages undertook a colossal work: to build a cathedral or a university; the Abbot, his monastery; he invested all he had, all human and theological know-how to create such a work! He built the cathedral, he constructed the Theological Summa, he praised God in the monastery and cultivated its lands! Certainly, he loved the Virgin. Certainly, all this is a sign; the proof is that his cathedral bore no other name than: Our Lady (Notre Dame). Our Lady of… and the name of his city, the location of his episcopal seat, was appended. He built the cathedral to the glory of God, in the image of Mary (Our Lady of…) to also be a cathedra, a place of teaching. Let us receive the lesson, and above all the lesson of the Council: Mary is the crowning of the Constitution on the Church, but she is also the holiness spoken of in chapter 5, her plan, her method, her mother and her image, her type. To underline the radical nature of the approach of Lumen Gentium (the Constitution on the Church), Pope John Paul II adopted a formula of a theologian of the last century and declared: “the Marian profile of the Church precedes the Petrine profile” (John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia (2003), §27, citing Hans Urs von Balthasar.). It must also be said: the Marian profile of the diocese precedes the episcopal profile!
Read also
Redemptoris Mater (Very important to study this document to understand the relationship between Mary and the Church according to Vatican II LG VIII and to Pope John Paul II)
The Bishop, ‘Master of Perfection’
Our Place in God, our Place in Mary Mary, the New Jerusalem