Thoughts in Saint John Cathedral

 

14 as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up

15 so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.

16 For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.

18 No one who believes in him will be judged; but whoever does not believe is judged already, because that person does not believe in the Name of God's only Son.

19 And the judgement is this: though the light has come into the world people have preferred darkness to the light because their deeds were evil.

20 And indeed, everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, to prevent his actions from being shown up;

21 but whoever does the truth comes out into the light, so that what he is doing may plainly appear as done in God.

-- John 3: 14-21

Sitting in Saint John’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, it seems strange to me that this church is not packed every Sunday. One is surrounded by beauty: the gothic arches, the dizzying vault of the nave, the sunlight streaming through stained glass, the statues, the paintings; the bright vestments, the incense; we have an exceptional choir. And there is the beauty of the ritual performance, that connects us with the ages.

This is the sort of live experience people would otherwise pay a good deal for, in a theatre or a gallery or a concert hall. Here we have all three, and it is free, and yet many seats are vacant.

In Korea, my favourite thing was to visit Buddhist temples on the weekend. Not that I am Buddhist; but beauty is beauty, peace is peace, tranquility is tranquility. Few were as substantial as this cathedral.

The only explanation, it seems to me, for all the empty pews, here and elsewhere in the magnificent churches we find in Eastern Canada, is that people understand full well that God is there. And this scares them away. 

Today’s mass reading says it. 

“Everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, to prevent his actions from being shown up.”

Declining attendance at church, let alone the rash of church burnings, speaks ill of us as a society.