For the first ten years of my life, I was a city dweller and lived in an apartment house.
A curious word, when you think about it—a kind of “house” [singular] made up of separate “apartments” [plural].
But, after all, a house is a dwelling made up of separate rooms. So, an apartment house is a dwelling made up of separate apartments.
The apartment house dwellers have some sense of solidarity since they live in the same building with the same identifying address—but, they have a sense of separateness too since the apartments vary in size, furnishings, and inhabitants!
To make it a tad more complicated, sometimes apartment houses themselves are grouped together, to be identified as neighborhoods—different clusters of buildings in the one and the same city or town.
As a kid, growing up, I certainly, clearly knew what apartment and which house I lived in, what neighborhood and (since it was in New York City) what borough we lived in, and of course what city, state, and country we lived it—and, as I learned more about geography, what continent and part of the world as well.
Later on, I learned about the world as one of many planets in the same solar system, our solar system as one of many in the same galaxy, and the many galaxies as well…
If your life started out in a very different situation—for example, on a large estate or ranch in a wide-open sector of the country—you might find the city lifestyle and mentality somewhat strange and hard to understand. And, you might even be more suspicious of strangers than a city dweller who encounters them all the time.
What stirred up all these odd thoughts for me was the concluding refrain of each stanza of a hymn in the Divine Office: “One church, one faith, one lord”
When we say, “one church” what do we mean? Is it the church we’re used to and were raised in? Is it the local parish or diocese? Is it the particular branch of Christianity we belong to?
Is our one church more like an historic dwelling on a huge estate or more like an apartment house with a lot of different dwellers, but sharing the same address.
Does one church mean everybody prays, believes, and behaves the same (or at least tries too)? Or, can one church include a wide variety of languages, ideas, customs, rules, and regulations.
For many centuries, long ago, people believed in the existence of many gods. This, of course, invited a difference of opinion about right and wrong, how to worship, and a host of other things.
But, if people believe in only one god, they must be actually believing in the one and the same god no matter what different names, titles, prayers, customs, and usages they might have and observe.
And, it follows, that the one and the same God isn’t giving contradictory commandments, rules, and teachings to different groups of believers. It’s got to be the misunderstandings of the different groups of believers among themselves.
Religiously, we are like dwellers in an apartment house! We live next door to one another, but in the same dwelling. Apartments can and may be different in size, furnishings, and number and kinds of people, but all share the same address.
We’re fellow dwellers and citizens in the same town and place. We’re all neighbors. We live together in the same world with the one and same God!
11 December 2022