The Votivkirche, Vienna
Sermon by Fr. Joseph Carrola
21st Sunday of Ordinary Time
Vienna, August 25th 1996
I've been studying German in Vienna for the past two months along with a group of Architecture students from the University of Kansas in America. On occasion I've gone around with them to see the sights of the city, and they've been kind enough to point out to me some of the architectural in's and out's of the buildings which one passes everyday in the city center. The churches proved to be our one common point of reference where our respective areas of expertise overlap. The students would explain to me the intricacies of gothic vaulted ceilings and flying buttresses, or baroque domes and neo-classical interiors, and I'd share with them the faith that inspired and animates such structures. Stone, art, life and faith all come together in the glorious churches of Vienna.
The Votivkirche where we worship today is no exception. In 1853 a deranged tailor tried but failed not far from here to assassinate the Emperor Franz Josef. In thanksgiving to God for the Emperor's safety, the people of the Empire built this impressive neo-gothic structure -- a powerful testimony of faith and gratitude. For the one who knows how to listen, these stones are not silent, but rather each one eloquently proclaims the glory of God and His providential care for us.
In today's Gospel, Jesus asks His disciples whom do the people say that He is. The Apostles report back a variety of answers, but Peter alone confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus confirms Peter in the Truth of his proclamation and acknowledges that what Peter has said comes not from man but directly from God the Father Himself. Peter receives, then, a unique grace and a unique role within the company of the Apostles and of all believers. He confesses Jesus to be the Christ, and Jesus, in turn, proclaims Peter to be the rock upon which He will build His Church.
We are the Church built upon the rock of Peter's confession, with Jesus Himself as our cornerstone. Each of us is a living stone supporting the structure inasmuch as we, like Peter, confess Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God and the Lord of our lives. In the gothic cathedral of faith, we sinners called to be saints are the living stone statues which decorate the facade, the towers and the interiors of the Church. Like the beautifully intricate ribbed vaulting of the gothic ceiling, the holiness of our lives and the love that we share enable the Church by the grace of God to soar to the heights of heaven, revealing the glory of God and His majesty.
The Catholic Church is splendid in its multi-faceted form. Coming from Africa and America, India and the Philippines, Great Britain and Ireland and nearly all the English-speaking lands of the world, each of us here brings with him the riches of his own culture elegantly enhancing our common faith. We are like precious gem stones, each in its own way reflecting the inexhaustible beauty of God. Although we gather as the English-speaking, Catholic community of Vienna, we know that what really unites us is hardly English at all, but rather our common faith in Jesus which we share in full communion with our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, the Successor of Saint Peter, the Rock upon whom Jesus has built His Church. Such is the universal glory of our Catholic faith.
In the Votivkirche this morning, we are privileged and blessed to behold the Church which no human hands have built but rather which God Himself has designed and constructed. The faith in Jesus that the Father has given to each one of us has, as with Peter, made us into living stones soaring together into one spiritual Temple founded upon the faith of Peter and the Apostles. Even though the architectural magnificence of the Votivkirche or the Stephansdom is a praiseworthy endeavor expressing in stone the living majesty of God's holy Church, such structures pale before the true glory of the Church: the faith and the love which unite each one of us together with Peter in proclaiming Jesus Christ the Lord!
Reproduced with the kind permission of Fr. Joseph Carrola
