Tabernacle

The word tabernacle in Hebrew means “dwelling place.” It is also derived from the Latin word tabernaculum, which means tent. In Biblical times, the tabernacle was known as the dwelling place of God. Within the tabernacle was an inner shrine known as the “Holy of Holies,” which housed the Ark of the Covenant. Biblical accounts describe the Ark as large, about the size of a 19th-century seaman's chest, made of gold-plated wood, and topped with two large, golden angels. The Ark of the Covenant contained several sacred objects, including the stone tablets bearing the divine inscription of the Ten Commandments. The Israelites carried the Ark throughout their forty year sojourn in the desert. When the Israelites were on the move, the Ark went ahead of them and was believed to have cleared impediments from their path and protected them in battle. When the Israelites stopped to camp, the Ark was placed in a separate tent called the tabernacle.

Later, when Solomon built his Temple, a special room was constructed to house the Ark, but that temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 B.C. To this day, no one knows what happened to the Ark. Even before the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, the prophet Jeremiah foretold the Ark’s disappearance.

When you multiply and become fruitful in the land—says the Lord--

They will in those days no longer say,

“The ark of the covenant of the LORD!”

They will no longer think of it, or remember it, or miss it, or make another one.

Jeremiah 3:16

Jeremiah’s prophecy revealed that there would no longer be a need for the Ark of the Covenant. God would make a new covenant with his people through his Son, Jesus Christ.

We Catholics are familiar with the word tabernacle. We believe the tabernacle is a place of divine dwelling because it houses the Eucharistic presence of God. That’s why we genuflect before the tabernacle. Our tabernacle was born out of necessity. The Church needed a place to keep the Eucharist for the sick and those who were unable to come to Mass. In the Middle Ages, a devotion grew up around the tabernacle. The tabernacle itself became an object of worship. However its primary purpose was and is to keep communion for the sick. As Fr. Paul Turner says, “The tabernacle serves the sick and the homebound. The altar serves the assembly gathered for Mass.” It is on the altar where the sacrifice of the community is joined to the sacrifice of Christ. It is on the altar where the sacrifice is blessed and sanctified. This is why, when we gather in the narthex before Mass, we place a host into the ciborium as a sign of our participation at the altar. By our participation in the Eucharist, we are “tabernacled,” that is, we become the dwelling place of God.

As rich and as ornate as was the Ark of the Covenant and many of our tabernacles throughout history, we, like the prophet Jeremiah, understand that God cannot be contained in or confined to a single place. As the evangelist John says at the beginning of his Gospel, “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” God’s dwelling, therefore, is with the human race, now and for

Liturgical Families

My maternal grandparents were born in Italy and my paternal grandparents were born in Poland. When both sets of grandparents migrated to the United States, they brought with them the family traditions they experienced in Europe. My parents continued many of those traditions and they incorporated some new traditions from the U.S. My generation, now scattered throughout the U.S. and around the world, continues to maintain some traditions from our parents and grandparents, but we also have integrated new traditions based on where we live. The local language, culture and customs are now a part of our long-standing family traditions. No matter what traditions we celebrate, we are still part of the same family.

The traditions that are part of our liturgies followed a similar journey. After the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the apostles and disciples went forth from Jerusalem to spread the gospel. They took with them the liturgical traditions practiced in Jerusalem but they incorporated new ones based on the local culture. These new or hybrid traditions formed what is called liturgical families.

The chart (below/to the right?) will help to demonstrate the various liturgical families. As you can see, all liturgical families of Christendom have their roots in Jerusalem. In the first centuries, branches were formed in Rome or the Latin West, and in Antioch (Greece) and Alexandria (Egypt) in the East. From these families, several liturgical rites emerged. They included prayers and traditions that developed based both on the local culture and on the influence of the founders. For example, the liturgies celebrated in Alexandria, the Coptic and Ethiopian Rites, are attributed to St. Mark the Evangelist, who brought Christianity to that region in the first century. Like all families, this one continues to grow. In 2015 Pope Francis established the Eritrean Catholic Church, separating it from the Ethiopian Catholic Church.

If you want to experience the distinct liturgies of these various rites, you won’t have to look too far. Epiphany Byzantine Catholic Church is located on Old Alabama Road in Roswell. This church is one of more than 20 Eastern Catholic Churches who are in communion with Rome. These churches are guided by bishops who have the title and rank of Patriarch or Major Archbishop. Eastern Catholic Churches are governed by the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, which allows them to maintain many differences with the Western or Roman Church, such as the ordination of married men to the priesthood.

St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church is located on Houze Road. This church is part of the family of Orthodox Churches who separated from Rome in the East-West Schism of 1054. Still, like those of us in the Roman Church, they enjoy Apostolic succession and the seven sacraments.

Though there are many distinctions between the churches in the East and West, we all belong to one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.

Blessings

Catholics love blessings! Blessings are assurances of God’s presence and protection. The Hebrew Scriptures are filled with stories of God’s favor bestowed in the form of a blessing. The Bible begins with God creating the earth and blessing all living creatures. In the gospels, Jesus is often seen blessing others, especially children.

It’s no wonder that our rituals are filled with blessings. One of the first things we do when we walk into church is to bless ourselves with holy water from the baptismal font. This is only one of several blessings we experience at Mass. During the Mass, the bread and the wine are blessed after they are presented at the altar. At the end of Mass, the entire community is sent forth with a blessing.

We even have an official ritual book known as the Book of Blessings. This book contains a compilation of blessings pertaining to people, objects, and various occasions, as well as blessings and services connected with official parish events. There are blessings for students and teachers, blessings for travelers, blessings for homes and offices, even blessings for boats and fishing gear. This tells us that everything, even fishing equipment comes from God and is sacred. Blessings are a way for us to acknowledge this reality.

Who can bless? Certain blessings are reserved for ordained ministers, but many blessings, such as the blessing of children by their parents or the blessing of a meal, may be performed by laypersons because of the priesthood bestowed on them in baptism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Every baptized person is to be a blessing and to bless.” A blessing is not simply meant to rest upon the person receiving the blessing, but is expected to be shared with others.

As the Book of Blessings reminds us, “Scripture attests that all the beings God has created and keeps in existence by his gracious goodness declare themselves to be blessings from him and should move us to bless him in return.”

The Lord's Prayer

It is somewhat of a norm to begin or end a meeting or gathering of parishioners with the Lord’s Prayer. I wonder whether that is because it’s a common ritual prayer or because it’s at the core of who we are as a people of faith. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in between. Because the Lord’s Prayer is so familiar, we can speak the words without really paying attention to what they say or considering what they mean.

If I say this prayer slowly and contemplatively, I can understand why it is placed at the beginning of the Communion Rite. The prayer teaches me that God desires an intimacy with me that enables me to call God “Father.” Because the prayer is plural throughout, it teaches me that my life is interdependent with the community of believers, that my words and actions have an effect on others. Ultimately the prayer teaches me that true peace can only happen when I forgive, when I surrender my needs to God’s will, and when I honestly believe that the “daily bread” I seek will be more than enough.

The Lord’s Prayer was given to us by Jesus through the gospels of both Matthew (6:9-13), and Luke (11:2-4). It was used in both private prayer and in liturgical worship from the earliest centuries. One of the Fathers of the Church found the teachings in the Lord’s Prayer so rich he called it “The summary of the whole gospel.” Perhaps that is why the RCIA makes a point of handing on the Lord’s Prayer to the Elect (the unbaptized) in a special ritual that typically takes place during the fifth week of Lent. May the Elect

Sent Forth to Evangelize

Not long ago, I awoke one morning, looked at my phone, and saw the message from Facebook: Pope Francis has accepted your friend request.

To be a “friend” of the Holy Father was inconceivable until the past several years. Certainly no one thought of such communication between the pontiff and others four decades ago when Pope Paul VI stated that the Church “exists in order to evangelize.” The pope wrote these words in the first paragraphs of a document called  Evangelization in the Modern World. That document responded to a synod of bishops on evangelization a year earlier. At that meeting, the bishops sought to answer the questions “What do we mean by the word evangelization?” This question has only spurred others such as, “How do we evangelize?” and “To whom do we evangelize?” More than forty years later, we are still asking these questions.

The world has changed in the past four decades and so have our means and methods of evangelization. Not long ago, I woke up one morning, looked at my iphone and saw this message from Facebook: "Pope Francis has accepted your friend request."

That would have been inconceivable in the 1970s.

Pontiffs and publishers alike have attempted to offer us guidance for evangelization in a contemporary world, from Rebuilt to Divine Renovation, from the Amazing Parish Conferences to Alpha. Many of these programs and strategies are designed to help the Church reignite itself. They affirm another statement in Evangelii Nuntiandi, “The church is an evangelizer, but she begins by being evangelized herself.” Still others are aimed at moving parishes from maintenance to mission.

Pope Francis envisions a church whose evangelization is directed outward. In his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), he says,

“I dream of a missionary option, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. #27

The Pope often speaks of a “culture of encounter” to encourage the baptized to move beyond our usual circles in order to bring the mercy of Jesus to the world, especially to the poor and to those often neglected by society.

            “In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become

            missionary disciples.” Evangelii Gaudium #120

Whenever we celebrate the liturgy, we are reminded of the call to be missionary disciples because each liturgy is an encounter with Jesus. We encounter Jesus in the hospitality, the sorrows and the joys of the People of God. We encounter Jesus in the Word proclaimed and in the prayers. We encounter Jesus in the sacred meal, the bread broken and the wine poured out. We encounter Jesus in ritual and symbol and gesture. These encounters are meant to season us to be the “salt of the earth,” to tenderize us to be the mercy of God. The liturgy strengthens us to build up the kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.” So that when we are sent forth to our workplaces, our homes, our schools, our communities we might encounter people in a different way, whether we are on social media or in a social gathering.

As Pope Francis says in The Joy of the Gospel,

            “Being a disciple means being constantly ready to bring the love of Jesus

          to others, and this can happen unexpectedly and in any place: on the street, in a city

            square, during work, on a journey.”

Our world has changed a lot in the past forty years, but our mission hasn’t. We still exist to evangelize. It has been said that the Church doesn’t have a mission; the mission has a Church. As Pope Francis asks, “What are we waiting for?”