The Dedication of the Church of Saint Ignatius of Antioch
Sunday 8 February 2026
O Almighty God, to whose glory we celebrate the dedication of this house of prayer: We give thee thanks for the fellowship of those who have worshipped in this place; and we pray that all who seek thee here may find thee, and be filled with thy joy and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Genesis 28:10-17
1 Peter 2:1-5, 9-10
Matthew 21:12-16
These past five weeks or so have been the most festive season after the Epiphany that I can remember. We celebrated our Lord’s baptism with little Charlotte’s baptism, then we marked the feasts of the Confession of Saint Peter and of the Conversion of Saint Paul on successive Sundays. This past Sunday provided a brief green respite, before Monday evening’s golden celebration of Candlemas. And here we are again, in festal white for the dedication anniversary of our Church building. So, with this season truncated because of an early Easter, we are left with but one properly ordinary Sunday in this so-called “ordinary” time. Perhaps this is what it would have been like before the Reformation – and you may be left feeling that, as did the reformers, that we have had a bit too much of a good thing. Indeed, Warren made a good case for us to dial it down from the gold of Candlemas to white for today’s celebration.
Nevertheless, I like the variety and inflection, and not just in the colour of the vestments. Because of the calendar, we have had the chance to reflect on the sacrament of baptism, the themes of Christian unity, power and authority in the Church, the nature of Christian vocation, and the reach of the Gospel. Today brings us to a serious consideration of the Church as a physical presence in the city-scape, a local manifestation in brick, stone, and mortar of the Body of Christ leaving a mark on the world and in the built environment. It is a complex question that has been the subject of intellectual disagreement and the cause of serious and violent conflict.
In this commemoration of the dedication of our Church, there is great temptation to take an extreme view. On the one hand, it would be easy to wax encomiastically about the beauty of the building and the generosity of its patrons and benefactors. On the other – and this remains a popular take – it would be just as easy to say that things like buildings and property don’t really matter, that they weigh us down and that we would be better off without them, that we should focus on people and ministry, focus on justice. Both arguments when applied have value, but also have had unfortunate consequences. Both miss the point.
In today’s lesson from Genesis, we hear Jacob exclaim, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” It is here that we find the hermenutical key that unlocks our understanding of the real significance of our church buildings. Our church is the gate. It is the threshold. It is the space that spans the gap between that which is finite and governed by the laws of time and space, and of that which is infinite, beyond time, beyond our full comprehension. The church is the space in between, and, as a doorway, a threshold, it embodies the very meaning of the overused (yes, by me) adjective, “liminal.” In Latin the limen is the threshold, the lintel, the sill, and poetically can be understood as both the beginning and the end. If West 87th Street stands on one side of the lintel, and the heavens stand on the other, the church is the door frame that is, well, “bigger on the inside.” References to the Tardis [or Doctor Who] notwithstanding, the church is that place we enter that provides space, shelter, and peace from the hustle and bustle of the external world, where we can look beyond this moment, connect ourselves to all those who have come before us and who will come after, and seek understanding and perspective. We do this not in order to walk across the threshold into the “great beyond,” but so that we may step back and reflect and return to the street and our vocations with new insight. We return with a renewed sense of hope in, and a vision of the nature and majesty of our God who is Love. We return nourished by the meal we take together in this way-station, strengthened for the work we will face.
We return over and over, yet, by its very nature as a threshold, a space in between, it is not designed for us to remain here. No matter how beautiful or meaningful our experience in this place, its purpose is not fulfilled unless we return to the world and use what we have learnt. It is meant to be a glimpse into the eternal world of God that can strengthen us, fortify us for the work we have to do. We find a foretaste of the heavenly banquet that assures of our relationship with God in both the present moment and into eternal life. It is a reassurance of our faith. It doesn’t work, however, if we stay; use it as a hiding place from our responsibilities to love our neighbour, our responsibilities as members of the Body of Christ. This is the lesson Peter learnt on top of the mountain when he sought to prolong the experience of his Transfigured Lord that he saw there.
While we can not remain here, nevertheless, the Church stands here, day in and day out, year after year, ever ready to ensure that we have space for this experience whenever we need it. And we need it over and over again. Coming to stand in the threshold that bridges the gap between the world and the eternal isn’t just a one-time thing. It can’t be. What the Church provides can’t just fix us in one go, fix everything and make it better, give us crystal clear insight. Our knowledge on this side of the infinite will and must remain only partial. It is that whole “through a mirror darkly” thing. Participating in the life of the Church is part of a process of growth and discernment, of re-incorporation into the body of Christ that sustains and gives us hope and courage to face the challenges and wonders of the world. Yet here, using our freedom and our faculties for understanding that have been given to us by God, and that are different for each of us, we can gather to learn and grow together . This threshold stands for us to enter again and again, because here we find that “ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!”
Our introit for today proclaims, “terribilia est locus ipse” – “how terrible is this place.” Like this Church it holds meaning that is in tension with itself. It is a phrase that evokes Jacob’s exclamation, “how awesome is this place!” It also conjures that sense of terrible that you imagine when you first hear it. This place is awesome. This place is terrible; it is dangerous. It inspires awe and reflects God’s presence, God’s nearness, and the infinite possibilities for understanding and reconciliation that are contained here. It is also terrible in how many dangers lurk here. Indeed, the most significant of these dangers are the ones the reformers perceived in the grandiosity and extravagance of the Church. On the one hand we can use the Church to escape, and make an idol of the building and of the liturgies we enact here, forgetting about their relationship with the life of the world. On the other, we can reject it and fail to see its value in keeping us connected both in body and in spirit with the realm of angels and archangels and all the company of heaven that are eternally offering hymns and prayers proclaiming the Glory of God and radiating divine Love.
Like everything in the finite world, or anything that partakes of it, the Church is flawed and incomplete. It is both a place upon which we can lavish too much time and attention and that we can dismiss as unnecessary for living out God’s commandments in the world. We are called, however, to understand this church with a sense of balance, which is something that people seem to be finding harder and harder in our world today. Indeed, practising a view of our Church as both infinitely important and as a pile of stones that can hold us back, is completely in keeping with the nature of this place as a threshold. It is a place where we can learn to hold seemingly opposing views. It is a place for us to reflect on our obsession with material things and, at the same time, on our desire to be rid of the physical in pursuit of union with God. It is a place where we can work to understand a God who created the world and all that is in it, whose very nature is to express himself into the life of the world, and who calls us to orient our relationship with that world towards the pursuit of that which is infinite, to the pursuit of Love and of justice, to the reconciliation of all that is created with that which Is, but was never created.
We take the time to celebrate the dedication of this place, so we can intentionally focus on the complex web of meaning we find here, so we can come to value the nuances of what it means to spend our resources maintaining and using a place of great beauty. We also come to see that each time we leave this place – full of the power of the Holy Spirit, nourished by the Sacrament of Holy Communion, and reincorporated together into Christ’s very Body – we use what we have gained in our encounter with the infinite to enrich and inspire our work in the world, assisting Our Lord in building up the Kingdom of God and reconciling the world and its peoples with Him.
Andrew Charles Blume ✠
New York City
Cornelius the Centurion, 4 February 2026
© 2026 Andrew Charles Blume