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A venerable basilica is the mother of all churches

In the eighth chapter of his Confessions, Saint Augustine relates the story of an old and learned Roman philosopher named Victorinus. He had been the teacher of many a Roman senator and nobleman and was so esteemed that a statue of him was erected in the Roman Forum. As a venerable pagan, Victorinus had thundered for decades about the monster gods, dark idols, and breathless demons in the pantheon of paganism. But Victorinus assiduously studied Christian texts and whispered to a friend one day, “You must know that I am a Christian.” The friend responded, “I shall not believe it…until I see you in the Church of Christ.” Victorinus responded mockingly, “Is it then the walls that make Christians?” But in his grey hairs, Victorinus finally did pass through the doors of a Catholic church to humbly bow his head to receive the waters of Holy Baptism. There was no one who did not know Victorinus, and at his conversion, Augustine writes, “Rome marveled and the Church rejoiced.”

A church’s walls do not make one a Christian, of course. But a church has walls nonetheless. Walls, borders, and lines delimit the sacred from the profane. A house makes a family feel like one, a sacred place where parents and children merge into a household. A church structurally embodies supernatural mysteries. A church is a sacred space where sacred actions make Christians unite as God’s family. Walls matter. Churches matter. Sacred spaces matter. Today...

Attributions
By LPLT - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5314209; By AndrewRm - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5829719;