Thursday,
1/24/13
Allow
me to repeat two sentences from the first reading.
“They worship in a copy and shadow of the
heavenly sanctuary, as Moses was
warned
when he was about to erect the tabernacle.
For
God says, ‘See that you make everything according to the pattern shown
you
on the mountain.’”
As
a follow up on that, check with Chapter 36, 37, and 38 of Exodus. Those
chapters in detail specify the
type, the amounts and the dimensions of the brass, the acacia wood, and the linen
that were to go into the temple.
That
first sentence I quoted above gives the reason the pattern had to be followed
to the T. They
were to “worship in a copy and a shadow
of the heavenly tabernacle.”
The
Jews seemed to have felt that their temple was an exact copy of the house in
which God lived in heaven. We can see that in Chapter Six of the Book of the
Prophet Isaiah. When Isaiah had a vision of God in heaven he saw God above the
heavenly temple’s altar with the train of his garment filling the temple up
there. (There were even hot coals on the altar.)
Because
the Jews felt that their temple was God’s house they imagined he was around
every corner listening to their whispers.
God
wanted people to think he was waiting for them in the temple. I think he wants
us to think of each Catholic Church as his own house.
Once
I asked sixth graders for a written answers to the question: “Is a church God’s
house where we should keep quiet?” One girl answered, “I belong to a Holiness
church, and we shouldn’t keep quiet, but a Catholic church is God’s house, and
we have to be quiet there.”
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