Finding Faith in a Rock

Can't help it, I'm a church mouse. What else would you expect from a cradle Catholic with parochial grade and high school, seminary college and graduate theology education? Don't answer that! I know all the horror stories. Through it all, I'm both a survivor and an embattled believer. After all these decades, when I enter my parish church, Christ the King in Pleasant Hill, California (USA), a welcoming voice inside me still says, "You're home, Al."

While visiting several Baltic countries, Germany, Poland, and Russia this past July, Esther and I toured many Christian churches and cathedrals, mostly Orthodox or Protestant (only a couple of Catholic churches made it on our itinerary). Almost all of these edifices--some quite magnificent--felt like museums and art galleries. They demonstrated little evidence of a pulsing, 21st century faith. By that I mean real people engaged as a faithful, supportive, difference-making community. With one, wonderful exception.


As soon as I entered The Rock Church in Helsinki, Finland, my heart said, "The Lord is here." Architect brothers, Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen, designed the church and built it (1968-1969) by blasting it out of solid rock. Natural light brightens the inside through 180 panes of glass between the dome and the walls.

This was the only sanctuary in which I wanted to park my spirit and breathe the faith of its resident community. I thought it had to be a Catholic Church (pardon my bias), because I had that same "I'm home" feeling I get at CTK.


Several young men were setting up for a prayer service. I asked one of them, "What denomination is this church?"


"Lutheran," he said, seeming puzzled that I had to ask.

I wasn't surprised as much as I was impressed. In the lobby/vestibule of the church, I found a table with religious articles laid out, I suppose for sale. I was unprepared for my next surprise: the selection of devotional materials. The table monitor had spread an array of rosaries across the surface, along with books and pamphlets promoting devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus.


I couldn't help myself. I said to him, "I'm surprised to see rosaries being offered in a Lutheran church." It was his turn to look at me with puzzled curiosity. "We have great devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary," he said with a warm smile. 

I stayed for the inspiring prayer service conducted--in English--by a young man and several musicians. About that time, Esther came to drag me away. "The bus is leaving!" she said in an all-too-familiar tone. I didn't say it, but my heart echoed the words of the 12-year-old Jesus in Luke 2:49: “Why were you looking for me? Do you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

What I said was a macho, "Do you really think I'd have missed that bus?"



Copyright (c) 2009 by Alfred J. Garrotto