Who Is the Abandoned Building? A Catholic Reflection on Community

Abandoned buildings make me sad

Is there anything sadder than an abandoned building?

I drive by them every day.

To think that once an investor bought and developed a property, a new business hired job-seekers, got up and running, bright-eyed and chasing the American Dream…

But at some point the light burned out.

Now the building sits abandoned, dusty and dilapidated with rats racing through it.

Someone’s dreams must have been shattered—like the building’s broken windows.

Awaiting the day it's condemned by the municipality.

Who is to blame?

Was it the rookie small business owner who dove in headfirst without thought for the cold hard numbers? Was it city planners who didn’t plan more strategically? Was the building itself doomed from the beginning? Insufficient foundation, proverbial corners cut by contractors, asbestos? Did hurricanes or tornadoes take turns at the building?

Spiritual questions

Amongst us souls, who is the abandoned building? Crumbling and disturbing to behold…

Is it the lapsed Catholic? Is it the practicing Catholic in a state of mortal sin? Is it the politician who began with noble intentions but now lusts for power? Is it the bishop hardened by decades of diocesan politics?

"Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him." CCC 1855

Am I the abandoned building—when I fill my ears with secular music? Like a building once secure, doors now flung open to the unyielding outside elements…

An abandoned building is never an isolated tragedy.

It's an eyesore to the street, the neighborhood, the city.

Like the tendrils of the sinner pulling down the morale and the morality of those around him.

The sadness brought about by an abandoned building in one’s neighborhood, must be less than a shadow of the sadness warranted by sin in one’s neighbor, as we “are one body in Christ” (Romans 12:5 NRSVCE).

Hope

But with the final destruction of an abandoned building, isn’t there the hope of a new building blossoming in its place?

I’ve seen it happen.

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” John 12:24 NRSVCE

May we pray that the Holy Spirit reinvigorate all of us and our communities, like new life poured into abandoned buildings and their communities.