They have not labored in vain

The Bible's word for carpenter can include various tasks: woodworking, stone cutting, blueprint-making and bookkeeping.  While he knew about heaven, he also knew about contracting, and so he knew what he was talking about when he said that a man does not construct a tower without first estimating the cost (Luke 14:28).

I knew a priest, rather gruff on the surface, who wept at ordinations because he knew better than the young priests the cost of discipleship, and yet he loved the inestimable gift of the priesthood.  The same thing happens at weddings when elderly couples weep, knowing the joy of the newlyweds but also the "richer and poorer, sickness and health" that ensues along the way to the serenity of golden age.  Everyone smiles when a baby is baptized, but that lustral water inducts the child into the army of Christ which, increasingly in our time, requires heroic sacrifice.  Such is the price of glory.

Today we deeply grieve the fall of the Twin Towers.  They were the costly marvel of their day.  The banner in our church with the names of the fireman and citizens of our parish who died on September 11 remembers the unspeakable cost of living in a world attacked by evil.  "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it" (Psalm 127:1).  We can never fail to praise the heroism of those who did great things that day, nor can we lament sufficiently the horrors inflicted by worshippers of false gods.

On a happy note, our parish in "Hell's Kitchen," which has long known the challenges of crime and poverty, is the locus of the biggest building boom in the history of our nation.  At each Mass we hear the sound of hammers through the stained-glass windows.  The newest tower rising down the street will be 1,009 feet tall with corporate offices, condominium units, and a luxury hotel.  Jesus the carpenter, who knows all things, knows that it involves a $2 billion capitalization, including $1.2 billion in debt.  Our parish's debt is to the Lord for what we shall do for all the souls moving into this neighborhood.  He shall demand from us an accounting.  Saint Teresa of Calcutta knew that it would cost her much when she founded a religious order.  Since then many other religious orders have cut corners by selling out to worldly concerns, as though politically correct forms of "environmentalism" and "peace and justice" superseded the peace of Jesus and the justice of salvation.  Some even abandoned their religious habits and communal lives.  This is their last generation, as they resemble geriatric institutions.  In contrast, Saint Teresa's Missionaries of Charity numbered twelve sisters in 1950.  Today there are 5,161 sisters, 416 brothers and 7,598 houses ministering to the poorest of the poor and bringing them the Gospel.  They counted the cost and have not labored in vain.