Many of you know that our beautiful church of St. Ignatius of Antioch was not the first church building built on this property. In 1903 a brick structure was built which was a combination church and school. Within a decade it was evident that the church wasn’t going to be big enough for the quickly growing parish. The population of the neighborhood was growing due to urban flight from the city for a number of reasons. For one, your great grandparents generation came out here as the city began filling up due to new immigrants coming to Cleveland, some from Europe and some from the American South. Secondly, due to new factories, the big industrialized steel cities didn’t smell to good, and to move out to West Blvd. was a break from crowded smelly city life. Thirdly, a new church needed to be built because the family was growing, bigger families needed more pews. But also, the catholic family was growing because the Catholics were successful in sharing their faith with their non-Catholic neighbors.
So, ground was broken for the new church of St. Ignatius on April 4, 1925, with a lower church and upper church—big enough to house this booming Catholic population. Some of you may remember when mass was celebrated downstairs in the lower church and busses would pick up parishioners from around the neighborhood, as the parking lot never could quite accommodate all the Sunday worshippers in those days.
I wish I could take you on a tour of the lower church, but’s it just not safe enough to be wandering around down there. Maybe one day, we’ll be able to afford a renovation to make the lower level usable at least for a gathering and meeting area. The lower level was accessed by the outside stairwells, and entering the church, you’d first be probably be struck at first by the pillars topped with these beautiful carved capitals depicting the four evangelists.
And then kneeling down at your pew, you’d see, written in latin above the sanctuary, the words of our responsorial psalm today, the sixth verse of Psalm 95: Venite, adoremus et procidamus et genua flectamus ante Dominum. Come, let us adore and bow down and bend the knee before the Lord.
Every time you’d come to church, you’d see this reminder, of what made this building different from the skyscrapers downtown and even the family home. It is here that God is worshiped. It is here that we show our faith and our love for God, by bending the knee, by kneeling before him and adoring him in the Blessed Sacrament.
Parish council shared with me that there was once an attempt to remove the kneelers from church, and and I’m so glad there was some resistance by the parishioners, because kneeling before God in God’s house, is a constitutive part of Catholic worship, a posture of humility we see already practiced by our Jewish ancestors.
This is why kneeling at the Communion rail—kneeling for Communion—was custom for Roman Catholics, for well over a thousand years, closer to two thousand, than one. As an acknowledgement that you were kneeling down before the Lord himself present in the Sacrament.
As many of you know I’ve begun to offer on a weekly basis, on Monday evenings, the Latin Mass, for the Mass which fed and nourished the souls of your grandparents is being rediscovered by new generations of Catholics. This Monday night, in particular, I will be celebrating the Solemn High Mass for the Feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch, which is February 1st on the old calendar. If it’s been a few decades or you’ve never experienced Solemn High Mass, come check it out on Monday evening. You might not understand everything that’s going on…but that’s okay, do we ever? But you can come and adore and bow down and kneel and pray.
Friday night, I assisted at a solemn high mass, at St. Paul’s Parish down in Akron, at the conclusion of their week of Eucharistic devotions. The pastor, Father Matt Pfeiffer, my good friend and classmate, shared a story during the homily, Friday night, a story from our seminary days. The seminarians make a winter retreat before the beginning of the spring semester every year, and we were at a retreat house down in Columbus. There’s a saying amongst seminarians that God doesn’t call the perfect, he perfects the called, and this little aphorism was on full display on this retreat. There was a pair of seminarians who just didn’t get along—huge personality differences—they just couldn’t see eye-to-eye. They argued, often. And on the last day of the retreat, in a moment of real vulnerability, one of these seminarians opened up, and shared with the group, he said, it’s no secret that this other seminarian and I don’t get along, but last night, I went to the chapel, to kneel down and pray before the blessed sacrament, and I was there for some time, and when I looked over across the chapel, there, kneeling in adoration, was, Michael. And I realized, that despite our differences, both of us loved the Lord, in faith and adoration we were united.
And that’s what being Catholic is all about, isn’t it? Despite our difference, we adore, we bow down, and we kneel in the unity of faith. Despite our differences, we set them aside when we walk through these doors. White, black, rich, poor, conservative or progressive. This place has always been that way, where the very diverse people from the neighborhood, could come and kneel and worship.
There’s been a lot of talk about unity these days. But any unity that is not based on living under God, or rather, kneeling before him, is artificial, and will never last. Honestly, I don’t think it’s a coincidence, that the civil unrest that we are experiencing in this country at this moment in history comes at a time when mass attendance amongst Catholics, church attendance in general, is at an all time low. For how can we have unity, if we do not rightly acknowledge and come to kneel before the source of that unity.
Any national revival of civility, neighborly trust, or honesty in business, will only come as a result of spiritual and moral revival. And that is not something the government can mandate or enforce or fabricate. For without God, man can only impose an unholy uniformity through force and coercion, a counterfeit imposter of the sacred and charitable bonds of unity through Christ.
You want to trust your neighbor again, kneel beside him in the eucharist. You want civility to reign even among people you disagree with politically? Kneel beside them. You want peace in your families, ensure you are kneeling together, and adoring the Lord together.
To kneel before the Eucharist is to submit your life to Him, to renounce everything that does not come from him, anything unclean, as we heard in the Gospel, is to exorcized and expelled from our lives, any belief contrary to His teaching and the teaching of His holy church.
Those words, “Come, let us adore, and bow down, and worship” are an invitation that the Word of God makes to us, that we may know his peace and unity in this life as a foretaste of heaven. And yet, it is also a command, to carry that invitation to those we meet out in the world, to the unbeliever, to those who kneel before the false gods of the world, or only worship their own ego. We are sent by the Word of God into their lives, that, with God, we may be one, and know his peace and rest in his presence for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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