Quomodo sedet sola civitas: “How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!” Each year, the Catholic Church meditates on these words, the beginning of the Book of Lamentations, during Holy Week.
Have you ever tried to stop in a Catholic church for prayer to find the door locked? Like a sports stadium which remains closed except during games, so it seems too many churches are locked by their keepers unless there is a liturgy occurring. Though I understand that there are real security concerns with keeping a church open throughout the day, this problem was resolved in the past by encouraging people to visit the church often and pray. A group of people praying will likely dispel any malfeasance that could occur in an empty church. The churches that once were full of people now sit lonely, locked up because of the dangers of the world. This is a great tragedy because Jesus waits.
Jesus waits for us.
My fascination with the beginning of Lamentations draws from the repetition of its opening line in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited. The beautiful story follows “The Sacred and Profane Memories of Charles Ryder,” an Englishman who slowly finds himself brought from atheism to Christ through his friendship with a noble Catholic family. As the novel comes to a close, Charles finds himself back on his friends’ estate, and is drawn to the chapel:
“Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame […] the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem….There I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.”
Every Catholic church and chapel around the world keeps a prisoner, a prisoner who is there by His own will. The small red flame that sits near the door of His cell tells each visitor of His presence. Some of these flames are in beautiful tall candles which must be lit using ladders, others in a “a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design,” as Waugh describes the one in his novel. Each light reminds us of the prisoner who allows Himself to be captive in the tabernacle. If we truly believe that the bread and wine truly become the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, then the reposition of “consecrated hosts” means that Our Lord allows Himself to be captive in Churches throughout the world, waiting for us to reverently and worthily receive Him.
The flame doesn’t burn for Christ. It burns for us, for soldiers in the Church militant fighting far from our heavenly home. We often go astray, and separate ourselves further in heart from God than Jerusalem was from Waugh’s Great Britain—but nonetheless the flame keeps burning, and Christ keeps waiting for us, calling us to Him.
In the Gospel, Jesus exhorts us to visit prisoners as a corporal work of mercy, noting that “whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.” There is another kind of prisoner who often sits alone, kept away from His followers by His own servants. Jesus sits and waits, making Himself a prisoner of the tabernacles throughout the world. Just as the father of the prodigal son waits for his son’s return, and runs towards him while he was “still far off,” so does Our Lord wait for us in the tabernacles of the world. Jesus doesn’t offer us the fatted calf, which will eventually leave us hungry again. Instead, he offers Himself: His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. He sits waiting for us to spend time with Him, burning anew among old stones.
In 2019, Catholic Mass attendance is at an all-time low, polls are indicating that only one-third of U.S. Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and pastors are locking churches, leaving people unable to visit the Divine Prisoner. These factors can sometimes make me lament with Jeremiah, “How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!”
Jesus waits for us. Let us visit him in prayer, even just staying for 5 minutes after Mass to pray; perhaps the city might be full once more.
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