So, how do you like the new look in our church? Finally, all 2,242 pipes of our new organ are in place, both in the choir loft and the positiv divisions over the doorways flanking our Blessed Sacrament Chapel. Aren’t they magnificent!?! We are very blessed to have a beautiful church, with splendid stained glass windows that present all of Salvation History, a handsome, granite altar and ambo, from which we hear the Word of God proclaimed and we receive the sacred Body and Blood of Christ, the source of our salvation. One area where beauty was lacking in our beautiful church was with our organ. As you may recall, our previous organ had been built as a demonstration instrument for an organ teachers convention that was held in Philadelphia in 1965. It was never intended for church use and had been an inadequate instrument for us from the very beginning. As you may know, the organ has been the official instrument of Catholic worship since 812AD, when Charlemagne had one installed in his chapel. It is the official instrument of Catholic worship because it provides such a wide range of musical voices, from the deep 16’ wooden pipes – that you feel more than your hear – to the twitter of the tiny 3” flue pipes, along with ranks that imitate trumpets, flutes and oboes – as well as sounds that are unique to an organ – all of which lead a congregation to worship of God in all of our spiritual impulses, from plaintiff supplication to grateful thanksgiving to glorious praise. The installation of our organ is complete but it will take another four weeks to voice it so that all of these 2,242 pipes make beautiful music together.
I would like to use our new pipe organ as a metaphor for the lessons we are given in today’s readings. But, first, you have to understand a little more about our organ, so allow me to explain. You may wonder why it has 2,242 pipes. It’s because, after careful research, our liturgical music team selected 37 ranks to provide us with a wide variety of musical tones which, as I mentioned a moment ago, range from the deep principal pipes to the tiny flue pipes, some of which you see behind me on the western positiv division. These pipes can be played on the three manuals and foot pedal boards on each organ console. The organist uses his/her extensive learning, experience and great skill to select the correct stops to blend the ranks together for beautiful musical accompaniment to our worship.
In the same way, each and everyone of us – like the 2,242 pipes – is called to make sure that we learn our faith well so that, through years of experience, we may express, ever more clearly, God’s love as his faithful community and develop the proper disposition to show our love to God and share his beautiful love and mercy with our neighbor. It will take several weeks to voice our organ; learning about our faith and growing as a faith filled community, on the other hand, is our lifelong task.
Today’s readings call us to reflect on how we develop our faith. In our first reading from the Book of Sirach we read that just as the quality of a potter’s mold and the care of a tree will determine the quality of the piece of pottery when it is put in the kiln or the quality of the fruit that is taken from a tree, what we have to say – both to God and to our neighbor – will be the result of how well we have learned about and accepted God and his love for us.
We hear our Lord repeat this same wisdom in today’s Gospel when he tells us that “a good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.” It is because, as we hear Jesus explain, “A good person, out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person, out of the store of evil produces evil.”
In today’s second reading, we hear St. Paul encourage us to “be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” Learning about God and his call to holiness is an arduous, lifelong task – much like building, installing and voicing an organ or learning how to play it. But, just as our organ will help us to worship God with great joy because of the skillful work of its builders and the masterful playing of our organists, so each of us can lead others to God through our well-learned task of showing God’s love in our daily lives.
In this morning’s Gospel, we hear, once again, the humorous comments that our Lord makes about the blind leading the blind and removing a wooden beam from our eyes. We all know how silly it is to think that a blind person could successfully lead another blind person. And, Jesus was a carpenter by trade. He – and everyone to whom he first made this comment – knew that a wooden beam wouldn’t fit in our eyes. He used these two rather humorous sayings to get his audience – and that includes us – to laugh at themselves and be open to an important lesson. As we prepare to begin, once again, the Lenten Season, let us be ever more conscious of our own blindness to our sins and our need to continue to learn about God and his goodness to us. Then, our words and actions will better reflect God’s will for us and we will be more like this church – a beautiful house of God! And, like our new organ, we will join together in harmonious worship of God, both here in church and in our everyday lives. Most importantly, we will be able to share in the victory that God gave his Son on Easter Sunday; the promise of eternal life in heaven, where we will all join in joyful praise of God for all eternity!