Some Notes on the Church as a Building

By Enda Conlon

These notes are mostly from the “Spirit of the Liturgy” by the great contemporary defender of the Faith H.E.. J. Card. Ratzinger.

(a)    Christian Churches are built in the shape of  a cross.

(b)     The word “church”  as used for the building is an abbreviation of   “house of the church”, which was the term used  originally to describe Christian places
of worship. The temples of other religions were more often spaces reserved for the deity and to be entered. This was the case  with the Temple at  Jerusalem
where only the high priest entered the “holy of holies” to perform the rite of atonement and then only once a year.

(c)    A church is a building where Christians assemble for worship. .  

(d)    The  word “church”  (Latin : ecclesia)  simple means “assembly of the people”. The prototype “assembly of the people” was the gathering of the people of
Israel on Mt. Sinai to hear the word of God.

(e)    Christian churches combine the functions of the Synagogue (the hearing of , and instruction in, the word of  God) and the Temple – the offering of
sacrifice.

(f)      In the synagogue the shrine of the Torah represents the   Ark of the Covenant . Before the Ark of the Covenant was lost at the time of the exile in
Babylon , it was the only object allowed in the holy of holies. The Ark was seen as an empty throne upon which the “Shekinah” – the cloud of God’s presence
descended. After the loss of the Ark the holy of holies remained empty.  In a Catholic church the tabernacle, through the doctrine of the real presence,  is the
“holy of holies”.

(g)    A synagogue has two focal points  - the seat of Moses , from which instruction is given and the shrine of the Torah representing the Ark of the Covenant..
The synagogue, as a building, is oriented so that when the Rabbi and congregation are facing  the shrine of the Torah  they are facing the Temple in Jerusalem.
Catholic churches should be oriented towards the east (but CTK , unfortunately, isn’t) so that when one is facing the tabernacle one is facing east.

(h)    The “seat of Moses” becomes the “bishop’s throne” in cathedral churches.

(i)      The orientation towards the east is not a matter of residual sun worship but arises from the same metaphor as we use when we say “Christ our light”  in
the vigil ceremony or “light from light, true God from true God” in the creed.  This image goes back  (at least) to St. John  - “in him was life and the life was
the light of men”.  The Temple has ceased to express the hope of Christians ;  its curtain is torn forever. The east supersedes the Jerusalem Temple.

(j)      In the early Church prayer towards the east was regarded as an apostolic tradition.. The date of its origin  - the turning from the Temple to the east – is
not known exactly.  

(k)    The altar on which the sacrifice of the Eucharist  is offered represents the Temple in Christian worship. The transition from animal  sacrifices to “worship
in harmony with the Logos” is one of the marks of the transition from Old to New Testaments.

(l)      Images have been a controversial issue since Deuteronomy’s prohibition of graven images. Images have been prohibited in Islam and (since the 4ht
century) in Judaism. Ancient synagogues were richly decorated with scenes from the Bible. This tradition was carried on in Christian churches.

(m)  There have been periods of bitter hostility towards images – notable in the 8th century Byzantine church and in England in the late 16th and 17th centuries.

(n)    The complete absence of images is incompatible with faith in the Incarnation of God. God has acted in history and entered into our sensible world, so that
it may become transparent to him. Images of beauty, in which the mystery of the invisible God becomes visible are an essential part of Christian worship.

(o)    Baptismal fonts used to be eight sided because 8 was seen as the number representing the cycle of life beginning again. Seven was the number associated
with man (7 sacraments, 7 ages of man, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins, 7 corporal works of mercy  etc.). This was because 7 = 4 + 3   where 4 was the number
associated with matter  ( Aristotle’s 3 element – earth. air ,fire and water  )  and 3 the number of the Spirit  (Trinity, 3 theological virtues Faith, Hope and
Charity etc.).  Man was  (reasonably enough)  seen as “matter plus spirit”.

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Introduction to Apostles Creed-Part 1

By Enda Conlon

The Apostle’s creed is a very bald and straightforward summary  of the Catholic faith It  was probably drafted  for easy committal to memory by Christians  
already convinced  of it  and is obviously not intended to instruct or persuade the sceptical.

It is of great antiquity and is particularly associated with the Church of Rome – the see of Peter and it derives its authority from this association.

Even as very plain and unadorned  statement of the Faith it’s very  structure reflects the core, non-negotiable Christian belief in the Trinity . It is divided into 3
parts. The first part affirms belief in  God the Father – the God who created us; the second part in the divinity of  Jesus – the Son who redeemed us ; the third
part in the Holy Spirit – who sanctifies and renews us. The third part goes on to speak of the instruments of sanctification and renewal through which the Holy
Spirit works – the holy Catholic Church , the communion of saints and the forgiveness of sins and finally the creed speaks of the ultimate renewal – the
resurrection of the body and life everlasting.

Let us take the 3 parts separately.

Part 1.

I believe in God the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth.

The first part of the Creed we share with Judaism and to some extent with Islam. The term “Father Almighty”  goes back at least to the paganism of the Romans.
I remember being struck by reading this same term – Pater omnipotens  - applied by the Roman poet Virgil to Jupiter  in the first century BC. The Christian
reading is that we can call the God who created us in His own image  “Father”. We see here the  articulation of the Judaeo-Christian sense of our absolute
singularity in creation  and that we stand in a relationship of sonship to God, the creator of all things. The very name Israel, which was given to  the patriarch
Jacob , means “He who wrestles with God”. The story of  the Catholic religion is the story of  our deepening and intensifying  relationship with God as he has
revealed more of Himself to us. We should not just, as it were,  politely acknowledge God’s prior interest in creation but we must engage with Him  
wholeheartedly and, so to speak, whole-mindedly. In the  words of Scripture   (Deut 11) - we should love the Lord, our God with our whole heart and our whole  
soul.  The piety of Christians and Jews has a strong sense of  the approachability of God and the warmth and intensity of our relationship with Him.

Part 2.

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and
was buried. He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God; from thence he
shall come to judge the living and the dead.

Without  a pause for breath , the second part of the Creed rushes through the core Christian beliefs about our Lord – the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the
Resurrection,

the Ascension and the Judgement of the Last Day.  “He descended into Hell” is not in the Nicene creed and the meaning is obscure. According to the late Mgr.
Gilbey  what it means is that the redemptive act of Christ’s crucifixion  was retrospective and also redeemed the souls of the just of the generations who lived
before the Incarnation. All of part 2 is extremely compressed .  For instance, the relationship of the Son to the Father which here is passed over in the phrase
“Jesus Christ his only Son, Our Lord”  is described with exultant eloquence in the Nicene creed which  we say here on Sundays  -  “ God from God, light from
light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father”.

When the creed speaks of “conceived by the Holy Spirit”  we should compare this to the Nicene creed’s affirmation of our belief in “the Holy Spirit .. who
proceeds from the Father and the Son” Here the Apostle’s creed  seems to be saying that the Son issues from the Holy Spirit. It can all seem very confusing and
incestuous.

One approach to trying to make sense of it all is this. I have a sense of myself and my relationships as separate distinguishable things.  But I also know that there
wouldn’t be a me without my relationships – not just that I would be a bit different – but that I just wouldn’t be me at all. Just try bringing up a child with no
relationships. On the other hand I know that there has to be a me to be involved in relationships in the first place. There is some sense in which me and my
relationships are distinct, but so intimately connected that they co-create each other;  they come into being with each other and each could not exist without the
other. Some kind of thinking like this is behind the Church’s sense of the Trinity.

One might say that the Church drives the sense that we are social creatures – not just accidentally and as it happens, but profoundly and necessarily into the
Christian understanding of God.

The remaining clauses of this part of the creed are fairly self-explanatory. The Catholic faith believes in Judgement. It believes in the possibility and necessity of
Judgement because it believes that we have a free will – that we can make free choices. It believes that in the exercise of our free will to glorify God in our lives
we most  make manifest the “image and likeness of God”  in us.


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The Apostles Creed-Part 2

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.

The Apostle’s creed just refers to the “Holy Spirit” as if everyone would already know what was meant by this term. In the Nicene creed it is amplified to “ the Lord the giver of life,
who, proceeds from the Father and the Son, who together with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets”. The “giver of life” is  a poor
translation of the Latin “vivificantem”  which  conveys a sense of continuous animation and inspiration. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity.

The Catholic faith understands the Holy Spirit  as God made manifest to us as the agent of renewal, of re-freshening , of inspiration  and  of sanctification of our lives and of the world.
The word sanctification  is apt to be understood  in hopelessly vague and woolly ways. It is the process whereby, of our own free choice and in response to the grace of God, we seek to
live so that our lives declare the glory of God. So that we too can share the elation and exhilaration of Mary and echo the words of the Magnificat :

“ My soul does magnify the Lord and my spirit does rejoice in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on his lowly servant and from this day all generations will call me blessed”

The Catholic  Church  believes that we should all, with no exceptions,  be in the business of sanctifying our lives. It is not some specialised  activity for the  professionally religious or for
otherworldly folk with plenty of  time on their hands.

There is a very Catholic phrase  “lex orandi , lex credendi” – how we pray is how we believe.  Like much else in the Faith an understanding of the Holy Spirit is better conveyed in prayer
and poetry than in quasi-philosophical formulas.

The  prayer to the Holy Spirit is “Come , O Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful and enkindle in them the fire of thy love; send forth thy Spirit, O Lord, and they shall be recreated
and thou shall renew the face of the earth”.

The metaphor of fire here needs to be understood in terms of the elements of classical Greek physics – earth, air fire and water. It is not one of fire burning and consuming but of flame
rising through and above the  more “earthy” elements to its natural place ; so the Holy Spirit animates and inspires us to rise abovc our temptations and sinfulness to our true destiny in
a fulfilled relationship with God.

Sometime ago it came up that the fundamental Christian idea of Hell is the misery of having screwed up a relationship in which we could have been utterly fulfilled. By contrast the
fundamental Christian idea of Heaven is the joy of being in a relationship in which by our very natures, as creatures able to know and love God,  we are completely fulfilled. This is most
simply and authentically expressed in the classic phrase  “we shall see God face to face”.  Other visions of heaven whereby we might vaguely float about getting used  to a new set of
wings while  practising the harp, or meeting old friends in a heavenly version of Rover’s  Return or the 19th  hole do not , to put it mildly, form any part of the teaching of the Church in
this matter. However the Catholic Church does not despise or reject our human natures or our human attachments and, as authentic parts of our nature, these,  in some way beyond
direct comprehension,  will be subsumed and transfigured  in the ultimate fulfilment of our nature when we see God face to face.. This is the force of the phrase “the resurrection of the
body”.

It is impossible to exaggerate how central the doctrine of the Trinity is to the Catholic faith. When we are received into the Church we are baptised  in the name of the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit. Virtually every act of Christian worship is  preceded by an invocation of the Trinity.  If any of us should be so fortunate as to die to the sound of the prayers for the
dying our last discernible words on this earth  might well  be “go forth Christian soul, in the name of the God that created thee, the Son that redeemed thee and the Holy Spirit that
sanctified thee”. For Catholics awareness of the Trinity is the alpha and the omega and pretty much everything in between.

The Church has always held that Trinitarian nature of God is a mystery – not in the sense that we cannot fruitfully reflect on it – but that we cannot exhaust it. There are many ways of
thinking about the Trinity. This is the one that speaks most to me.

The Christian God is transcendent. He is the God of whom the psalmist writes “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.  He is the God  of Isiaih  (55) whose thoughts are not
our thoughts and whose  ways are not our ways . He is the God who from the centre of the whirlwind rounds on that argumentative and sorely tried man of faith Job with the devastating
questions :

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth ? Speak if you understand it.

Who hath laid the measures thereof  ?. Do you know ? Who hath stretched the line upon it.

Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea ? or hast thou walked in search of the depth ?

Have the gates of death been opened unto thee. Hast  thou seen the doors of the shadow of death.  Speak, if you know all these things.” He is the God to whose unsearchable designs  
and inscrutable  will we submit our lives. We must be able to echo  the resilience and piety of  Job’s reaction to misfortune and disaster :

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb , naked shall I go hence. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

The Church  expresses its sense of the transcendent God in its doctrine of  God the Father.

The Christian God abides with, and in, his creation. . He is the God who saw that creation was good. He is the God who made man in his own image and likeness. He is the God of
involvement and engagement  – the God who spoke to Abraham and the patriarchs , the God of the Covenant with His chosen people, the God  of Jeremiah  (1) who knew us by name
before we were formed in our mothers’ wombs and who consecrated us before we came to birth.  He is the God who turned the sin of Adam into the “happy fault that won for us such a
Redeemer”. He is the God whom we  can approach through the most vivid of all His images – our own human natures  He is the God of the beginning of St. John – the Word (or better
the Logos).

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word ”

He is the God who so loved the world that for us men and  our salvation He was crucified died and was buried.

The Church expresses its sense of  God’s involvement with the world  culminating in   the redeeming act of Christ’s passion and death in its doctrine of God the Son.

The Christian God is the God of the relationship between the  Father and the Son – and through this between the Creator and His Creation. St. Augustine in the Confessions sees the
beginning of the revelation of the Holy Spirit at the very beginning of the Bible, Genesis Ch 1 Verse 2.

“And the Spirit of God move upon the face of the waters and God said let there be light and there was light”.

The light  is the light of awareness by which we begin to see and understand and be drawn into a relationship with God.

This is the God who came among the apostles as  tongues of flame in the upper room. He is the God  who is with the Church and from whom the Church derives its sense of being able to
endure in faithfulness to the faith of the Apostles. “For I shall be with you all days even unto the end of world”. He is the God who constantly guides and renews the Church. He is the
God of whom Augustine reflecting on his own response to God writes  “Too late have I loved thee, o beauty ever ancient and ever new ; too late have I loved thee.”


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