A pile of ruins

Bishop Scott Bullock
The Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 13, 2025

A college buddy of mine and I made a pilgrimage to the modern nation of Turkey one time, which contains some of the most ancient and venerated Christian historical sites: the cities of Antioch in Pisidia, the Cappadocian region, Constantinople, and all those the cities of the Apocalypse, featured in the last book of the Bible. For a follower of Jesus, these are sacred spots where our faith took root, flourished, and matured into the faith that we profess today. But perhaps the best preserved of all these Christian sites is Ephesus — as in The Letter to the Ephesians — the legendary home of St. John, the beloved disciple of the fourth Gospel and the final home of Mary, the Mother of God.  

As a student of theology, we had been taught of the strong connection between Ephesus and Mary, the Mother of God. Even beyond the fact that this is where she ended her earthly life before being assumed, body and soul, into heaven, it was the place that, in the year 431, bishops from around the Christian Mediterranean world gathered to discuss and then proclaim the truth that Mary was the theotokos, the Mother of God, the one who bore God to this world. While the term is familiar to us now, the Mother of God, it was a title discussed for nearly four centuries, where the followers of Jesus tried to wrap their minds around how a simple human being could be the bearer of the Almighty God in her womb. Finally, they said, “yes, she did give birth to God, because Jesus was fully God and fully human, and she did indeed bear him to the world. She was theotokos, the Mother of God.” And, in doing so, the Council Fathers of the Council of Ephesus, in 431, held firm to the true yet confounding reality that Jesus was fully God and fully human, Son of Mary and Son of God.

So, when this solemn declaration occurred, that the bishops had expressed, a splendid new church was built for the occasion. Over the next 100 years or so, it was built even larger and more splendid Cathedral, the seat of the bishop of that town of Ephesus, a fitting monument to the monumental declaration that had happened there. 

It is for this reason that we continue to pray for example, “holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death” and why we have images and statues like the one of the Mother of God in our churches. Yet now, one has to really want to find that church that I just referred to. For amid all the ruins of Ephesus, very much off the beaten path from the center of the city, one can find a small, unobtrusive sign that says in Turkish, “Meryem Kilisesi,” and then, in a very small subscript, “the Church of Mary.” With thousands of churches dedicated to Mary, one can miss this small sign, for it in fact points to the Church of Mary, where she was proclaimed “the Mother of God.” Now, this splendid, historic church, the very center of the life of the universal church and its devotion to the Mother of God, is nothing but a pile of ruins. 

Once one of the great glories of Christendom, it is now only with careful consideration that one can see the outlines of a classic basilical design, the pillars of the nave and the rounded apse, just like the one we often pray in church. From its original splendor, it has fallen away into near obscurity and unrecognizability. For me, it is one of the many lessons of the sites of antiquity — things once so grand, now barely existing. 

This haunting site speaks to me a truth that we all know — even the most splendid creations of humanity, even those that speak of eternal truths, will certainly and finally succumb to the ravages of time and reveal they are not eternal. Undoubtedly, this will be the case in most every church we have ever gathered in for Mass. Even in this place we’re at right now.

But, in the temporary, passing spaces in which we live, eternal things are happening, right? This is the truth behind the Gospel we have just heard — the meeting between Jesus and the scholar of the law, who asks Jesus, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 

In other words, which actions, seemingly temporary and passing, lead to that which does not pass? And, to this insightful question, Jesus speaks of the two great commandments: the love of God and love of neighbor.  And, because the Lord wants us to live in the everlasting, he teaches us that how we care for each other is the way to the fullness of eternal life. The two great commands of love of God and love of neighbor. These are the things that last; people all around us. 

In the parable that Jesus uses to illustrate the end of our lives, he gives the Good Samaritan, who willingly spends passing wealth, to provide for that which does not pass, an eternal soul, lying by the side of the road, the sick man who he restores to life. As we live the two great commands — loving God and loving our neighbor — we fulfill our end, that for which we were created, the commandments that relate to things that don’t pass my brothers and sisters. 

In the end, Jesus says, in essence, why live simply for things that pass, unless you put them at service of that which does not pass — the eternal life of others, an eternal that is God. So when, maybe even these stones lay round us in ruins, and when many of our efforts pass away, those monuments to the love of God, human lives, ours and those around us, will remain for we have been created for eternity. So, hadn’t we better live for God and neighbor? For they alone last.