On Memorial Day and in honor of Mary's month (May), my family and I took a Marian pilgrimage to The Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe in Orlando, FL. It was about an hour drive one way and was a lot of fun for all of us.
What is hilarious is that before I became Catholic I drove by this "shrine" and thought to myself, "What the heck is that place?" The word shrine rolled off my tongue like a curse word at your grandmother's house. I felt like I needed to give myself a holy backslap for even uttering the word. A couple of my hypotheses were:
- It was a Mormon temple (it just looked weird to me)
- It was a pagan temple
- It was some type of Marian cult
- It was a Muslim temple
- It was weird and I'd never go there
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| Reverend Billy Graham |
Crazy, huh? Apparently the word "shrine" just means a place set aside in honor of something. Hmmm...harmless maybe? You can find one for Luther with this statue outside of it. They don't use the word shrine, but it feels all shriny in a bavarian minimalist kind of way. I also have learned that you can find statues and memorials for all of the reformers all the way up to famous protestant preachers of today. Hey, I thought Catholics and Protestants weren't square on the whole statue thing? Wait a minute, I get it, they don't publicly go up to their statues and kneel in honor of them, but rather wave from the car or give a "in-their-heart-here's-looking-at-you-kid" type of acknowledgement.
That's cool.
Which leads me to expel the demon that is hagiophobia--or fear of anything holy (saints included). When a Catholic puts up a statue of a saint, when he or she kneels before the statue, they are acknowledging that the saint--at that moment--is before the face of God in perfect union with the Holy Trinity incorporated perfectly into the Body of Jesus Christ (sure beats looking fondly at your dead grandmas picture cause she made great cinnamon buns). That's a mouthful but its worth putting in your mouth if you haven't tried it before. Don't be afraid of the holy and especially the holy ones (saints).
Which leads me to my second confession regarding hagiophobia. I mean, really, what the heck was I thinking being afraid of a shrine set aside for Mary, who by the way was coronated Queen at the moment of the conception of Jesus Christ in her womb, and would receive her unique crown upon her Assumption into heaven. As a follower of Jesus Christ, why wouldn't I be more afraid of a church that looks like a modern court house or movie theatre? Isn't a bit of cainophobia rational for those that are holding to a faith grounded in a 2,000 year old historical reality? Instead, wouldn't it make sense to be paranoid about a church that looks like this:
or this
Yep. You should be scared half to death.
