All of us have special places in our life. Special places are memorable. But, what makes a place more than that? What makes a place sacred and holy? That is to say, what makes it set apart? What makes it somehow blessed? The sacred place is where we meet something beyond ourselves.
A church is holy because it is first of all dedicated to God. It becomes a place of meeting with God. In the church, holy things happen there. In the church, prayers have been offered. Weddings and meals have been offered. Even bitterness and anger have been offered. All those offerings make the actual, physical place holy. The actual physical place has provided the space for our human struggle to meet divine grace.
The first Christians did not build churches because for about the first three hundred years of Christianity Christians faced on and off persecutions. The Catechism says, "When the exercise of religious liberty is not thwarted, Christians construct buildings for divine worship" (CCC 1180). Building an identifiable building dedicated to the worship of the Christian God would have marked the places where they could be found to be arrested, tortured, and killed. Once Christianity was accepted and legalized in the Roman Empire, the construction of church buildings and the "conversion" of Roman civil basilicas into Christian places of worship followed shortly thereafter.
What exactly is a church building? The church building is more than just the place where Christians gather. The Catechism explains, "Visible churches are not simply gathering places but signify and make visible the Church living in this place, the dwelling of God with men reconciled and united in Christ" (CCC 1180). The word "church" is used to describe both the Mystical Body of Christ and the building in which Christians worship and pray because a church is meant to be an icon, image, and representation of the Church and of all that the Church is called to be.
So what is a church? Canon law defines a church simply as "a sacred building designated for divine worship" (CIC 1214). The Catechism expands on this describing a church as "a house of prayer in which the Eucharist is celebrated and reserved, where the faithful assemble, and where is worshipped the presence of the Son of God our Savior, offered for us on the sacrificial altar for the help and consolation of the faithful" (CCC 1181). It also instructs that "this house ought to be in good taste and a worthy place of prayer and sacred ceremonial" (1181), and that a church "must also be a space that invites us to the recollection and silent prayer that extend and internalize the great prayer of the Eucharist" (1185).
A church building is not a multi-purpose space or another busy and noisy place among many. It is a building that has been built and set apart expressly for sacred things: for the celebration of the sacred mysteries, for the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacred Liturgy, for the worship and adoration of the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and quiet prayer in His Presence. In the busyness and craziness of our lives what a gift it is to have such a place.