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Some years ago I reviewed a documentary film about a place called "Skellig Michael", or "Saint Michael's Isle": an ancient and long abandoned anchorite community ( hermit-monks) off the west coast of Ireland.
Well over 1,500 years ago there was a great movement of "flight into the desert" among many Christians who left settled life behind to seek Christ in the solitude of empty spaces. For the Mediterranean man, it was the trackless deserts of southern Egypt and the Sinai. For these Irish monks, it was a flight to the sea; to a barren steep rock at the very edge of the then known world.
The narrator of the film made an observation that struck me: he said that "For the Celt, the sea is the desert."
Half Celt as I am by ancestry I've have always preferred the sea and its vast openness and changeable moods to the more ordered and scenic beauty of mountains and lakes. Also it is by the sea that I most often like to pray and reflect.
Perhaps I've been unwitingly obeying a deep-rooted ancestral instinct all along?
Well, today I leave for my annual Spiritual Retreat that Canon Law requires of every priest.
And I will go to a very small island off the coast of New England at the widest part of Long Island Sound to do so.
Funny, those instincts of blood and ancestry!
Yet, there is something else.
Right on the top of that steep and terrifyingly sheer island the monks labored to build a Chapel: an enclosed place for their prayer and the Mass.
The people of Israel, desert wanderers for forty years always carried the precious and literally awe-ful Ark of the Covenant enclosed in a tent and veiled from sight.
The open desert/sea AND the enclosed, delineated Sacred Place have always gone together in the life of the People of God of both the Old and New Covenants.
The soul might flee to the open spaces of Creation; but his God calls him to encounter Him in His full presence in a "house made with hands"; a "copy of the true tabernacle not made with hands."
Today is the Feast of the Dedication of what is called "The Mother and Head of all the Churches of the City and the World": the basilica variously called "Saint ( Holy) Saviour" and "Saint John Lateran."
It is held to be the very first consecrated church of Rome and of the western Catholic world.
Cathedral of the Pope as Bishop of Rome, the Papal residence for a thousand years, the site of five Ecumenical Councils, the legendary site of the Baptism of Constantine and countless thousands it stands as the very center of the Roman Church, of which we are all children.
Here is the traditional wooden altar upon which the Popes from Peter to Sylvester I offered the Sacred Mysteries.
The sea and the basilica....Upon "my" little island of retreat I will walk and gaze at the sea; then go into the lovely church there to find the Creator of sea, sky, land, and desert as He dwells amongst us in his Blessed Sacrament: the sacred space, roofed, walled, anointed and redolent of candles, incense, and the presence of the Angels.
I will pray for you this week. Remember me in your prayers as well.
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