Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero
The Feast of the Dedication of the Monastic Church of Saint Augustine, October 4, 2026
I have always loved churches. And, growing up in Puerto Rico, I was a very devout boy who went to church every day… by myself… because I wanted to. My home environment was chaotic and violent, to put it mildly, so music, school, and church became outlets of safety, peace, and order for me, where the world seemed to make sense.
Two churches were especially important to me growing up. The first was the church of Nuestra Señora de la Monserrate, the church connected with my Catholic school. I went to Mass there every morning before the school bell rang. Somehow, though, all that going to church didn’t keep me from lying and being conniving.
I almost failed sixth grade because I would tell my teachers at the beginning of each class period that Sister Vivina, the principal, wanted me to go down to the church to practice the organ for the first communion liturgies. And I added to my little lie that she wanted Sandra, a beautiful girl with an even more beautiful soprano voice, with whom I was very much in love, to join me because she was singing in the liturgies. We were both quiet kids who never caused any trouble, so they believed us. I only attended Sister Davida’s classes, Religion and Science, because I liked her.
Sandra and I would spend hours in that church. I would play the organ and she would sing. And we would also climb up onto the roof of the church, which seemed immense at that age. We would sit there together, sing duets, and daydream. I did manage to pass sixth grade by a few points, but Sandra did not. She had to repeat the grade, and I felt guilty about that for many years. Fortunately, she eventually became a professional singer and had a wonderful performing career, so I finally forgave myself.
The second church was Santa Bernardita, in the neighborhood where I lived. It was my Sunday church. As a teenager I played guitar, sang in the youth choir, and was deeply involved in the youth group.
Looking back now, I realize that I was experiencing something about church long before I could have put it into words. Church is more than a building, and yet, somehow, a building matters. So, what makes a church a sacred place?
Saint Antony of the Desert taught his disciples that the presence of God is continuous and active on our behalf wherever we are, even when we turn away from God. Saint Augustine came to understand that the God he had been searching for outside himself was already within him. Saint John of the Cross, in his Spiritual Canticle, wrote of the Beloved as dwelling within the soul, as a secret inner dwelling place. And Brother Lawrence, the seventeenth century Carmelite who wrote The Practice of the Presence of God, found Christ as readily in ordinary work as in formal prayer. He taught that we can make an altar of our hearts.
In the reading from the First Book of Kings, Solomon understands what every person of faith eventually has to learn. God cannot be contained or confined to a building. And yet Solomon builds the Temple and prays that God will hear the prayers offered there.
God cannot be contained in a place, and God can become present to us in a place. The Christian tradition has always held together these two truths. God is everywhere. And we need somewhere to go to find God.
Human beings have always created sacred spaces, sometimes with magnificent architecture, and sometimes by simply recognizing that a particular mountain, river, or desert place is holy. These places help us step out of ordinary time and remember eternity.
We need matter, the physical, in order to awaken awe, wonder, and reverence. In the Incarnation, God entered time and space. Jesus did not come to us as an idea. He had a body and wept actual tears and died an actual death. And because we believe that Christ remains present among us, we continue to seek that presence here through sacramental ritual- the Eucharist, the Divine Office, clothing of novices, professions, funerals- in all those liturgical moments by which we mark time as holy. Sacred spaces are never the end, but they are very important means to an end. They help awaken us to the Presence that always is.
Twelfth century Cistercian abbot, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, was not particularly impressed with the lavish ornamentation that had begun to characterize some churches of his day. Yet at an anniversary of the dedication of the monastery church at Clairvaux, he preached about the holiness of the building, but he did so by turning the whole question upside down. “What sanctity”, he asked, “can these stones have? They have sanctity because of your bodies. Your bodies are holy because of your souls. And this house is holy because of your bodies.”
For Saint Bernard, the anointing and blessing of the church building mirror the anointing and blessing of the human person. The church is holy because the people who gather here are being healed and made holy.
In the Gospel reading from Saint Matthew, Jesus enters the Temple and sees that something has gone wrong. The house of prayer has become something else, so he overturns the tables. And then, he heals those who are excluded, the blind and the lame, and welcomes the praise of children. He turns the Temple into what it was meant to be: a place where the broken come to encounter God and be healed.
Back in 2019, I had the unforgettable experience to make a pilgrimage to Jujuy, Argentina, to visit La Misión Guadalupe and the extraordinary work our missionary friends Heidi and Monica were doing among the poor of that province. My pilgrimage began with a five-day retreat at the hermitage of Padre Fernando Ortiz, high on a mountain in Valle Grande. I was taught how to operate the various rustic appliances, including a wood-burning stove for cooking and a wood-burning water heater, and then I was left alone with God on that very holy mountain.
One of my daily activities was to hike to the top of the mountain, where there was an outdoor sanctuary. (And that’s the picture on the back of your hymn sheets.) There are hundreds of Indigenous communities scattered through the mountains of Jujuy, and Fernando told me that many of those communities have outdoor sanctuaries at the tops of their mountains. They are people of the land and worship outdoors where earth and sky themselves become part of their worship.
Another important experience during that pilgrimage, back in the town, was the celebration of the feast of San Expedito. It was an outdoor Mass, and hundreds and hundreds of people from very different socioeconomic circumstances came together. There was music, great processions, joy and devotion. Monica and Heidi told me that all the Masses of major feasts were held outdoors.
Why? Well, Fernando told me there are people who feel uncomfortable walking into a church. People who have been judged within the walls of the church and made to feel that they don’t belong. People who still hunger for God, but who carry wounds from the Church, and so they are more likely to attend a worship service that happens outdoors.
Fernando said: “Here everyone who comes forward for Communion receives Communion. There are no questions asked. What am I going to do, ask them if they went to confession? Ask them if they are Catholic? No. All who are hungry for Christ are fed. Everyone is welcome, all the children of God.” Isn’t that beautiful? The way it should be! In the words of Pope Francis: “¡Todos, todos, todos!” All are welcome!
“You yourselves are living stones,” says Saint Peter. The Church is not ultimately this building, but what God is building in us. “This is the house of God.” Yes. But God is not confined to it. God is in the Eucharist, and in the person who walks out those doors carrying Christ into a world that may never enter them. God is here, and in Jujuy, in the mountains, in the streets, in the hospitals, in the prisons. God is in the person who has been made to feel that they do not belong, and in the person who has never been inside a church.
So today, on this anniversary, may we celebrate this holy church that has been a vessel of remembrance and prayer for 105 years. May we celebrate the generations who built it and the generations who have maintained it and have prayed here. May we celebrate those who have found healing, and a vocation here. May we celebrate those who came here not knowing what they were looking for and discovered, perhaps slowly, that God had been looking for them. May we look toward the future because as long as there are living stones, God is still building.
But let us not question how to preserve this beautiful place so much as what kind of people will this holy place continue to make us? More loving, more truthful, more patient, more merciful? ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+
Two churches were especially important to me growing up. The first was the church of Nuestra Señora de la Monserrate, the church connected with my Catholic school. I went to Mass there every morning before the school bell rang. Somehow, though, all that going to church didn’t keep me from lying and being conniving.
I almost failed sixth grade because I would tell my teachers at the beginning of each class period that Sister Vivina, the principal, wanted me to go down to the church to practice the organ for the first communion liturgies. And I added to my little lie that she wanted Sandra, a beautiful girl with an even more beautiful soprano voice, with whom I was very much in love, to join me because she was singing in the liturgies. We were both quiet kids who never caused any trouble, so they believed us. I only attended Sister Davida’s classes, Religion and Science, because I liked her.
Sandra and I would spend hours in that church. I would play the organ and she would sing. And we would also climb up onto the roof of the church, which seemed immense at that age. We would sit there together, sing duets, and daydream. I did manage to pass sixth grade by a few points, but Sandra did not. She had to repeat the grade, and I felt guilty about that for many years. Fortunately, she eventually became a professional singer and had a wonderful performing career, so I finally forgave myself.
The second church was Santa Bernardita, in the neighborhood where I lived. It was my Sunday church. As a teenager I played guitar, sang in the youth choir, and was deeply involved in the youth group.
Looking back now, I realize that I was experiencing something about church long before I could have put it into words. Church is more than a building, and yet, somehow, a building matters. So, what makes a church a sacred place?
Saint Antony of the Desert taught his disciples that the presence of God is continuous and active on our behalf wherever we are, even when we turn away from God. Saint Augustine came to understand that the God he had been searching for outside himself was already within him. Saint John of the Cross, in his Spiritual Canticle, wrote of the Beloved as dwelling within the soul, as a secret inner dwelling place. And Brother Lawrence, the seventeenth century Carmelite who wrote The Practice of the Presence of God, found Christ as readily in ordinary work as in formal prayer. He taught that we can make an altar of our hearts.
In the reading from the First Book of Kings, Solomon understands what every person of faith eventually has to learn. God cannot be contained or confined to a building. And yet Solomon builds the Temple and prays that God will hear the prayers offered there.
God cannot be contained in a place, and God can become present to us in a place. The Christian tradition has always held together these two truths. God is everywhere. And we need somewhere to go to find God.
Human beings have always created sacred spaces, sometimes with magnificent architecture, and sometimes by simply recognizing that a particular mountain, river, or desert place is holy. These places help us step out of ordinary time and remember eternity.
We need matter, the physical, in order to awaken awe, wonder, and reverence. In the Incarnation, God entered time and space. Jesus did not come to us as an idea. He had a body and wept actual tears and died an actual death. And because we believe that Christ remains present among us, we continue to seek that presence here through sacramental ritual- the Eucharist, the Divine Office, clothing of novices, professions, funerals- in all those liturgical moments by which we mark time as holy. Sacred spaces are never the end, but they are very important means to an end. They help awaken us to the Presence that always is.
Twelfth century Cistercian abbot, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, was not particularly impressed with the lavish ornamentation that had begun to characterize some churches of his day. Yet at an anniversary of the dedication of the monastery church at Clairvaux, he preached about the holiness of the building, but he did so by turning the whole question upside down. “What sanctity”, he asked, “can these stones have? They have sanctity because of your bodies. Your bodies are holy because of your souls. And this house is holy because of your bodies.”
For Saint Bernard, the anointing and blessing of the church building mirror the anointing and blessing of the human person. The church is holy because the people who gather here are being healed and made holy.
In the Gospel reading from Saint Matthew, Jesus enters the Temple and sees that something has gone wrong. The house of prayer has become something else, so he overturns the tables. And then, he heals those who are excluded, the blind and the lame, and welcomes the praise of children. He turns the Temple into what it was meant to be: a place where the broken come to encounter God and be healed.
Back in 2019, I had the unforgettable experience to make a pilgrimage to Jujuy, Argentina, to visit La Misión Guadalupe and the extraordinary work our missionary friends Heidi and Monica were doing among the poor of that province. My pilgrimage began with a five-day retreat at the hermitage of Padre Fernando Ortiz, high on a mountain in Valle Grande. I was taught how to operate the various rustic appliances, including a wood-burning stove for cooking and a wood-burning water heater, and then I was left alone with God on that very holy mountain.
One of my daily activities was to hike to the top of the mountain, where there was an outdoor sanctuary. (And that’s the picture on the back of your hymn sheets.) There are hundreds of Indigenous communities scattered through the mountains of Jujuy, and Fernando told me that many of those communities have outdoor sanctuaries at the tops of their mountains. They are people of the land and worship outdoors where earth and sky themselves become part of their worship.
Another important experience during that pilgrimage, back in the town, was the celebration of the feast of San Expedito. It was an outdoor Mass, and hundreds and hundreds of people from very different socioeconomic circumstances came together. There was music, great processions, joy and devotion. Monica and Heidi told me that all the Masses of major feasts were held outdoors.
Why? Well, Fernando told me there are people who feel uncomfortable walking into a church. People who have been judged within the walls of the church and made to feel that they don’t belong. People who still hunger for God, but who carry wounds from the Church, and so they are more likely to attend a worship service that happens outdoors.
Fernando said: “Here everyone who comes forward for Communion receives Communion. There are no questions asked. What am I going to do, ask them if they went to confession? Ask them if they are Catholic? No. All who are hungry for Christ are fed. Everyone is welcome, all the children of God.” Isn’t that beautiful? The way it should be! In the words of Pope Francis: “¡Todos, todos, todos!” All are welcome!
“You yourselves are living stones,” says Saint Peter. The Church is not ultimately this building, but what God is building in us. “This is the house of God.” Yes. But God is not confined to it. God is in the Eucharist, and in the person who walks out those doors carrying Christ into a world that may never enter them. God is here, and in Jujuy, in the mountains, in the streets, in the hospitals, in the prisons. God is in the person who has been made to feel that they do not belong, and in the person who has never been inside a church.
So today, on this anniversary, may we celebrate this holy church that has been a vessel of remembrance and prayer for 105 years. May we celebrate the generations who built it and the generations who have maintained it and have prayed here. May we celebrate those who have found healing, and a vocation here. May we celebrate those who came here not knowing what they were looking for and discovered, perhaps slowly, that God had been looking for them. May we look toward the future because as long as there are living stones, God is still building.
But let us not question how to preserve this beautiful place so much as what kind of people will this holy place continue to make us? More loving, more truthful, more patient, more merciful? ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+
