FRIDAY

In the gospel reading for today's liturgy, according to St. John, Jesus said "In my Father's house there are many dwelling places" (verse 2).  How have you understood these words?  For me, when much, much younger and being the son of a cabinet maker, I would hear these words and imagine rooms in a huge mansion.  I knew somehow that this imagination was most likely far from reality.  But, then, who had come back from heaven to tell us what it was like there, up there in that blue sky?  No doubt I thought of these dwelling places as someplace particular for Roman Catholics only.  We were the "only" real Church, as I recall what we were learning in those formative years.  But my neighbors on the right went to the Methodist church and next door was a family that went to the Episcopal church, etc, etc as you walked down our block.  The wall was very high in those days ... that wall of separation.  And God help us if we ever crossed the threshold of one of those churches!  There was a sense of loss for me:  these were my friends and I thought they were missing the boat.  Why would God keep them from those "dwelling places"?

Here is something that may surprise you:  words from John Paul II  in words from his Encyclical Ut Unum Sint (That They May Be One)  that you most likely have not heard.  They show that one man was lowering the wall.  "It is a source of joy to note that Catholic ministers are able, in certain particular cases, to administer the sacraments of the Eucharist, Penance and Anointing of the Sick to Christians" outside the Catholic flock."  This how my friends would get through those pearly gates would have been my understanding had those words been written in those early years.

"I did not know that!"  I can hear you saying that.  So, how do you interpret John's words?