"Jesus asked them, ‘But you, who do you say I am?’ Simon Peter answered, saying to Him, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ "

                                                                     Matthew 16:15, 16

Today is the Sunday of Church Sanctification. With this Sunday, Holy Church begins her liturgical year and opens the advent season preparing for the great event of Christmas and the birth of our Lord. During the coming weeks we shall relive those great and holy events that led to Christ’s birth. We shall celebrate the angel’s annunciation to Zechariah and Gabriel’s annunciation to the Virgin Mary in Nazareth. We shall relive Mary’s visit to Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist’s birth. We shall likewise recall St. Joseph’s vision prior to Mary’s deliverance of our Lord. To begin this season and also the whole year to come, our Church reflects upon herself, and we are given the opportunity to recall our baptismal commitment to Christ and to renew our role in the life of His Holy Church by deepening our commitment to Christ and becoming more active members of His Body, the Church. Next Sunday we shall mark the rededication of the Church to its mission.

St. Paul tells us in today’s epistle reading that: "Now above all we have a high priest who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven; and He has become the minister of the true tabernacle which God pitched and not man." This tabernacle is none less than the holy Church. St. Paul tells us the Church is Christ’s Body with our lord as the head and we as the body’s members. He also compared the Church to a building of which Christ is the cornerstone and the apostles and prophets the foundation.

The Church is not something of cold brick and wood but rather it is the living body of Christ. It is you and all who have been baptized into Christ. It is something that is living and growing and fulfilling itself. We have been given the great privilege to be the living units of our Lord’s Body, the Church, at this particular time in history. We have been given the mission of spreading the faith in today’s World.