It never ceases to amaze me how things in my backpack find hiding places. I have really scaled down my life to go on pilgrimage, but I am still carrying too much junk. I have one change of clothes (pants, t-shirt, long sleeve shirt) and a jacket. I have a laptop, a camera, lenses, a GPS, and all the chords to recharge batteries ad nauseam.

Yet every day there seems to be one chord that I desperately need, and for some reason I can’t find it. I usually go into a short term panic. I try to think of my options, and start figuring out how I am going to get through the remaining 353 days without that chord. “Why don’t I have a backup?” I ask. I quickly realize that I don’t want a backup because I’m already carrying too much stuff. Then, by some odd chance, I find the missing chord tucked away in a department that I didn’t know I had. Things like to hide. I have to seek to find them. 

I went to Mass today at the Basilica of National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. I have been to Mass there many times before. It is the church adjacent to the Catholic University of America where I went to college. I had my Baccalaureate Mass there. It always stood brightly lit as I would walk by late at night. It was very familiar to me.

If you Google Earth loaded on your computer, you can view my pictorial of the Basilica by clicking here.   

It is a massive building. So massive, that most of the churches I have visited thus far could actually fit inside and there would still be room left over. The concept for the building began in 1913, and by 1920 construction had begun. It bears the character of most great cathedrals in Europe. What I mean is it is not that it is Gothic or Romanesque, but that the desire was not to complete the Basilica all at once, but to welcome new  advances in theology and artistry as the building developed.

One such example of this type of development is artwork at the back of the Basilica near the organ which bears the title “The Universal Call to Holiness.” This is a theological concept stemming from the Second Vatican Council, 40 years after the beginning of construction of the Basilica. There are still massive parts of the Basilica which can hold future artwork, and even as I entered the Basilica today, workers are installing a mosaic on another emptied dome hundreds of feet above. 

It was meant to be a church modeling the United States. The dome, steeple, and entry way are influenced by other landmarks in Washington D.C., such as the Capitol, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial respectively. The marble columns are not uniformly brought from one quarry, but rather there is marble from each of the 50 states in the design.

There are side chapels in every corner of the building, usually dedicated to a different title or image of Mary. These titles often recognize the nationalities that make up the people of the United States from Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexico), Our Lady of Czestochowa (Poland), Our Lady of China (China), Our Lady of Hope (Purchased by Bob Hope), Our Lady of La Vang (Vietnam), Our Lady of Africa (from Antarctica I believe) and many, many more. 

The place is decadent to say the least, and for all the joy it brings thousands of pilgrims every year, I would not be the first to call it tacky. The display is jarring. I have to admit that as a student, at Catholic University, I often wondered “What is the point?”

There is this massive mosaic of Jesus (which a friend of mine nicknamed “The Big Scary Jesus.”) This mosaic is a concept piece uniting the Trinity into a single image by having Jesus (Son) with a figure like Zeus (Father) surrounded by fire (Holy Spirit). I am sure there is a number which can calculate the hundreds of millions of dollars that have poured into the construction of this building. I can’t tell you however the thousands of poor who live just down the street, who have poor housing, poor education, no food, and no jobs.  

For years I would ask, “How can this be just?” How can we build these kinds of buildings – which I’m dedicating a whole year of my life visiting – when the money could be used for those who are starving for resources just down the street?  I am also be disturbed by the “faithful” who come to Mass. I will give you a small clue as to how I perceive many of these pilgrims… A friend of mine used to work for the Shrine Basilica. He had to open up envelops which held money that went to the Basilica. The envelopes were requests for a candle to be lit for a specific intention. One prayer request quoted, “I pray for a painful and sour death to begin immediately for all the evil doers who support and perform abortion.” 

On one level, this is really a poor understanding of the dignity of the human person, a central teaching of Catholicism; on another level, this isn’t prayer… it is magic. So many people light their candle in hopes of manipulating God to do their own will, when the prayer Jesus tells us to pray is “Thy will be done.” I am very suspicious that many at the Shrine are not seeking holiness, but seeking favor, and such actions replace a beautiful religion with what amounts to mild sorcery. 

So how can I stomach it? I ask myself that question a lot, and no place in my life have I felt that question quell up inside me more than the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.  After Mass, there was exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, the Catholic form of meditative prayer in which the Eucharist is exposed for people to pray before.

I realized something as I prayed there. There is this elaborate Monstrance (A functional piece of art which is used to demonstrate the Eucharist for the assembly to see). The monstrance is gold and gaudy, but what it holds in it is a piece of bread. Before anybody gets bent out of shape that I’m calling the Eucharist merely “bread” let me invite you to get out your catechism.

Chemically, it is bread; not a single aspect of the physical nature of it has changed. The physical species are “accidents” (to use Thomas Aquinas language) which do not change. What changes, through the prayer we say together with the priest at Mass, is its essence, the soul of the bread, how we know it to be. An old word for this is “substance,” but that gets confusing to us because we use the word substance differently today than it used to be used. Anyway, I digress… 

Inside this gaudy overdone and elaborate monstrance is something simple and holy, made by human hands, from wheat and water, and then blessed. It is simple and in its simplicity it is profound. “I am with you… Remember me. Share me with others so that all may know love.” All of this elaborate nonsense is there to protect and cherish what is most valued to us… not gold, not silver, not art, but bread, blessed, broken, and shared.  

I don’t know that I’m at peace with the discrepancy. I still know there are hungry people on the streets of D.C. who could benefit from a 20 million dollar gift. Their benefit seems more appealing to me than another mosaic, but that is just me. I can rest easier knowing that all of this “stuff” protects something more precious than gold. With all the distractions sometimes I have to stop being so frustrated and look patiently to where the truth is really hiding. It is there, but sometimes I get nervous because I think I misplaced it. Don’t panic. The chord was just hiding.