Earlier this month I visited a “holy place” in my home state. It’s a Catholic shrine to a sainted woman by the name of Frances Cabrini.
It was a beautiful day and I spent two hours wandering the grounds of this retreat spot. I walked the meditation path, climbed the 300+ steps of the prayer stairway, explored the Cabrini Garden, and visited the Grotto and The Spring. It was peaceful and restorative.
I also spent some time learning more about this remarkable woman. I won’t regale you with the details, but suffice it to say, she was a true woman of faith, and someone well worth emulating. Which is exactly why the Catholic church has chosen to venerate her as a saint.
Not having been raised Catholic, I don’t ascribe any particular power to sainted people. My faith tradition has always stressed that we all, anyone who believes and is baptized in the name of Christ, are saints. We all gained that honorific when we chose to put our faith in Christ and His resurrection. And yet, it is not necessarily a bad idea to hold up certain worthy people as examples of faithful living. As long as we recognize Christ as our perfect example.
The second holy place I’ve been in recently is my church. Not to say that my church is any better than any other, no, but what makes it a holy place is that it is a consecrated place of worship. It’s a place that we, the congregation, have invited the Holy Spirit to fill, and to move through. It’s not about the building – and if you’ve seen my church, this is ought to be obvious. It’s about the presence of God in that place, and the presence of holy people gathered there to praise His name together.
Which brings me to the crux of this post – as I leave everything I know, and step into a new culture, where the holy places of old have been desecrated and where the holy people live less openly, what I take with me is far more powerful than anything I will encounter there. I take with me faith and the Holy Spirit, who has the power to transform any heart and any building into a temple for the Most High. This is what I cling to. This will get me through.