When in January of 1959, Pope John XXIII called for a Second Vatican Council, the first of its kind in almost 100 years, he famously said that it was time to open the windows of the Church. Opening the windows would let in fresh air and fresh ideas. It would reinvigorate the Church. The famous quotation believed to be uttered by John XXIII was this: “I want to throw open the windows of the church so that we can see out and the people can see in.”[1]
Whether or not John XXIII actually said that or not, it’s still a compelling image. Throw open the windows. Fling wide the doors. Let the outside come in. But also, let the inside go out.
In the past two years of pandemic, it has been interesting to worship inside this church with the windows cracked open for safety reasons. Admittedly, it’s distracting at times, as cars gun down Lancaster Avenue or trains roar by. But it’s a helpful reminder that, inside these walls, we are not meant to be a cloistered community. We are a living body of people energized for service. This building itself is porous to the world. We are porous to the world.
It doesn’t require much mental stamina to imagine what John XXIII was responding to when he called for the windows to be opened. Even more than a half century since he uttered his famous words, we probably know all too well the shadow side of a worshipping community of the faithful who gather day after day within the stone walls of a church.
This parish church is a rare exception with its doors open every day of the week. Most red doors of parish churches are bolted shut much of the time. So often, the light of Christ streams in through the stained glass, energizes the room with its radiant light, and then it stays. The interior of a church creates a greenhouse effect: the light comes in and warms bodies and souls, and then it seldom leaves. The Gospel heat generated in that activity buzzes within the church itself, but does it really go anywhere? Perhaps it only stays in the room, an intense and escalating heat energy that is trapped within.
Even when we imagine that we are taking this energy out into the world, is it really so? How much of the fire and dynamism that we experience within these walls during worship escapes out into the world? How much stultifies here due to the greenhouse effect? And if the heat of energized faith never leaves the room, why is that the case?
There are no easy answers, of course, but I wonder if today’s reading from St. John’s Gospel might offer us some possibilities. As difficult as it may be, we must recall that when the disciples are cloistered in the upper room in fear, it’s still that first day of the week, the Day of Resurrection. That is one very long day. Is it any surprise that they would be holed up together with the doors shut, if not actually bolted?
They have any number of things to fear: their lives, the loss of their past with Jesus, their memories, their security, their sense of orientation. Trauma does not breed an easy recovery, and these disciples had indeed experienced trauma, all in three days’ time.
The furthest thing from their mind would be any inclination to open the windows, fling wide the doors, invite the outside in. Fight or flight mentality breeds turning inwards, battening the hatches, and aroused amygdalas. With bated breath, thumping hearts, and hypersensitive emotional energies, the disciples huddle closer together. And then Jesus appears.
There is no invitation for him to come. Even despite the discovery of the empty tomb, there is no sense that Jesus could make himself present in their midst. No door needs to be opened or window unlatched. He appears, and he offers the truest antidote to the disciples’ fear: Peace be with you. Yes, perhaps love is the opposite of fear, but according to St. John, it is the peace of Christ that heals all fear.
And how unlike an exchange of peace at Mass or with a friend this is. This peace is not about ramping up the friendly heat in a room. It’s not about catching up on the latest news. It’s not about easy assurances that there will no longer be any conflict. The Risen Christ, bearing the wounds left by his traumatic death, comes into that room and offers the peace that passes all understanding. But it doesn’t stop there.
This fresh peace is aspirated as the very breath of the Holy Spirit that moves into the lungs of the disciples. It is meant to become their own breath. It is meant to fill their lungs with the fire of the Holy Spirit so that the breath can no longer stay there but propel them outside the shut doors of that house.
But it doesn’t. Yet a week later, and the disciples are once again shut up inside that room. Where did the breath go? Was that room baking with the radiant heat of Christ, pent up for a week rather than released into the world? Why did that gesture and breathing of peace not transform them?
And does it transform us? Week after week, even day after day, people are drawn into this church. Sometimes all the windows and doors are indeed shut, but Christ’s light still gets in. The breath of life gets in. Day after day Christ comes among us and bids us peace. This room is baking with the fire of God’s Holy Spirit. Can you feel the heat? So, what keeps much of this heat from returning back outside to catalyze the world?
The locked doors, the shut windows, the hermetically sealed environments of our faith are all controlled by one thing, and it’s a monster, a Leviathan, an enemy. It is fear. This lurking presence manifests itself in so many ways. It’s the fear of God itself—not a holy fear but a fear that if we don’t get everything just right, we will suffer another more dreaded eternal heat. It’s a fear that we will be shunned by our skeptical friends for sharing some of our Gospel passion with them. It’s the fear that we will offend someone by mentioning the name of Jesus. It’s the fear that the faith we share is somehow not compelling enough for an overly critical and rational world. It’s a fear of the other, of the stranger, of the one who is unlike us. It’s a fear of other people’s fears. It’s a fear that we simply don’t have enough money or resources to incarnate the Gospel in the world. It’s a fear that we are defined by our past rather than our future. It’s a fear of being vulnerable with others, vulnerable enough to share what’s behind this epicenter of Gospel fire that draws us here every week.
Amid so much fear, the doors between the Church and the world seem to get thicker and stronger. The windows appear to be latched even tighter. And the pent-up heat of this room seems to get more and more overwhelming until we can’t stand it.
But although we may grope in the dark for an escape valve and although we may be literally incapacitated with fear, there is an answer, and Jesus has shown us this answer in his response to those first disciples’ fear over two thousand years ago. The answer is the Risen Christ himself. No closed door or shut window can keep him out. It matters not whether we bar the gates or batten the hatches. He comes, week after week, day after day. He knows when we are afraid, and it is precisely then that he comes, surely and faithfully.
While we may in some inexplicable sense be afraid of him and of his Gospel, he is not afraid of us. He comes to us. He meets us as we secretly cower in fear even while we still worship the living God. For it is only the Risen Christ, the One who has conquered sin, death, and ultimately fear, who can provide the antidote to our sickness of fear.
He meets us not to scold us but to encourage us. His words are simple: Peace be with you. It’s a freeing peace, where past sins are forgiven and a new future is paved. It’s a peace that gives us an incredible power to forgive and let go and move on. It’s a peace that animates our bodies and souls with a fire that forges a new creation from the old.
I don’t know about you, but I can feel the heat. The windows may be slightly cracked in this place, but the heat is building up. It’s the heat of a Gospel that will save the world if we resist the temptation only to hold it here inside. Christ is alive. We are alive through his power. And if we let the Risen Christ dispel our fear, we have no choice but to run from this place, as if we are running from an empty tomb, to tell all the world why we are on fire.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday of Easter
April 24, 2022
[1] https://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/saint-pope-john-xxiii