Those of us of a certain age will remember when Pope John Paul II was the new, vigorous, dynamic embodiment of the papacy. He knew how to Pope. He set a remarkable standard for being pope with his world travels:129 countries in his twenty-seven years as the Holy Father. He had a custom, when he stepped down the portable staircase rolled up to the airplane door, of kneeling on the ground and kissing the ground of the country he was visiting. He did so because he wanted to stress that this land too was holy ground. In the Bible it was Moses who was told: “the place where you stand is holy ground.” He was challenged by being on holy ground. He did not kiss the ground but he did remove his sandals as a sign of respect for being in a sacred place. It was holy ground because God was there. The example of Pope John Paul reminds us that since God is everywhere there isn’t anyplace which is not holy ground. Our whole lives all we are doing is moving from one piece of holy ground to another.
However, have you ever wondered if there are some places which are holier ground? Entering a magnificent cathedral with vaulted ceiling and gorgeous stain glass windows can take your breath away as feel the presence of the holy. Think of the newly restored Notre Dame in Paris as such a place of awe. I remember walking through Muir Woods in California among the Giant Redwood trees with a friend. The trees there can grow to almost 300 feet and can have a circumference at their base of twenty feet around. Because they are so tall the sunlight that reaches you as you walk is filtered and diffused. As we walked, I noticed that we started talking softly, almost in whispers. The solemnity of the trees, the quality of the light, the silence of the forest made it feel like this was a sacred place. There is a Hasidic tale of a young boy who would skip school to go into the woods. His father wanted to chide him gently. One day he took him aside and said, ‘I have noticed that you like to walk into the woods. I wonder, why do you go there?’ The boy said to his father, ‘I go there to find God.’ ‘That is a very good thing,’ the father replied. ‘I am glad you are searching for God. But, my child, don’t you know that God is the everywhere and God is everywhere the same?’ ‘Yes,’ the boy answered, ‘but I’m not.’
On the other hand, there are some places which don’t seem very holy at all, where it is difficult to feel the presence of God. Try feeling the presence of God while shopping at the mall on the day after Thanksgiving to buy the doorbuster special or going to Lollapalooza with thousands of screaming fans whipped up by an avalanche of music or stalled in traffic with horns blaring and cars squeezing into places they really don’t belong. We have a hard time sensing we are in a sacred place at such times. But since those are the kinds of places we find ourselves and since God is everywhere and God is everywhere the same, we must change something in ourselves if we are to keep our feet solidly planted on holy ground no matter what.
The reality, Church, is this: planted deep within us is holy ground. As embodied creatures we benefit from all of the factors that speak to us of the sacred: religious music, churches and shrines, candles and incense, statues and rosaries, silent meditation, liturgical celebrations. All of these things can awaken in us a sense of the presence of God in our midst. However, the reason they can speak to us is because they echo the fact that God is already planted deep within us. We don’t find God in church, we recognize God there because of the divine spark that we possess. The reason we are always moving from one piece of holy ground to another is because God walks with us in every step we take, every move we make.
Closely related to that: God is also planted in each and every person we encounter in life. While there are some people we might recognize as holy – the saints, the Pope, the monks and nuns, the parishioners of St. James – the reality is that there isn’t anyone out there who hasn’t been named and claimed as a child of God, made in God’s image and likeness. Yes, sometimes it’s hard to see. Some people can obscure their identity as children of God by acting ugly, but they can’t change their fundamental identity as holy ground since it is the breath of God which makes human beings who they are.
Another memory of Pope John Paul: The first time he landed in South Africa during the apartheid regime that he refused to kiss the ground. It was only on a subsequent visit, after Nelson Mandela became president, that Pope John Paul would kiss South African soil on his visit there. Holy ground cannot be taken for granted. As the gospel for today reminds us, the ground might be holy, but it needs to be worked if it is to be productive, if it is to bear fruit. In the parable, the gardener says to the owner, let me cultivate the ground, let me fertilize it and it may bear fruit in the future. The parable reminds us that even holy ground needs attention. That is what the season of Lent is all about. With the fertilizer of prayer and fasting and almsgiving we are working our holy ground so that it will bear fruit that will last. Our holy ground is designed to grow bushels of compassion, of kindness, of forgiveness, of justice, of peace. Those fruits are precisely why God has made us holy ground in the first place.
