by

Prof. Bruno Forte, Roma

Where does God live? Where is it possible to experience His Word, His Silence, the gift of His Grace? It is in the Jewish-Christian tradition to answer these questions acknowledging in history a number of signs of the "encampment" of the God who is three times Holy among men. It is in particular the mystery of the Temple that illuminates this research: it allows itself to be examined in the Biblical tradition in three directions, corresponding to the three dimensions of time. In relation to the unique and definitive past of the redeeming event, the temple offers itself as the memory of our origins in the Lord of the heavens and the earth; in relation to the present of the community of the redeemed, the Temple is indicated as a sign of the divine Presence, the place of the alliance and the encounter with the community of the alliance; in relation to the future fulfilment of God’s promise, the Temple exists as the prophetic mark of God’s tomorrow in the world’s today. It is in the light of the Temple’s mystery that therefore a theology of the Sanctuary as the place in which God’s present can develop and that of the alliance with Him.

The Sanctuary is first of all mark of memory: these words mean that, in the great Judeo-Christian Biblical tradition, it is not simply the work of humankind, the result of flesh and blood, filled with cosmological and anthropological symbols, but it derives from an initiative taken by God living within history, and whose faith is a renewed memory. The Sanctuary is the home of the Eternal One, filled with the cloud of His presence (see 1 Re 8, 10. 13), overflowing with His Glory (see v. 11). In the atmosphere of adoration, invocation and praise, Israel knows that it is her God who has wanted the Temple as a mark of love and not the human pretension of having wanted to oblige Him. Salomon’s splendid prayer bears witness to this, starting precisely from the dramatic awareness of the possibility of yielding to the idolatrous temptation: "Can it indeed be that God dwells among men on earth? If the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain you, how much less this temple which I have built! …May your eyes watch night and day over this temple, the place where you have decreed you shall be honoured; may you heed the prayer which I, your servant, offer in this place." (1 King 8, 27-29). The Sanctuary therefore is not built because Israel wishes to imprison the Eternal One, but rather exactly the opposite because the Living God, who has entered history and has made history the history of redemption, wishes to provide a sign of His faithfulness and of His eternally living presence among His people.

The Temple will therefore not be the house built by the hands of men, but the place that bears witness of initiative of He who alone builds the dwelling: it is the truth entrusted to the words of the prophet Nathan. "Go, tell my servant David: 'Thus says the Lord: Should you build me a house to dwell in? ... The Lord also reveals to you that he will establish a house for you. ..." (2 Sam 7, 5 -11). The Sanctuary therefore offers itself as a kind of living memory of the heavenly origins of the elected and beloved people of the alliance: it is the permanent reminder of the fact that God’s people are not born of flesh and blood, but that a life of faith gushes from God’s wonderful initiative, who entered history that we may join Him and also to change our hearts and our lives. The Temple hence proclaims to all generations how immense our God’s love is, and bears witness to how He was the first to love us and wished to be our Saviour. What in the Old Testament was the Temple of Jerusalem, in the New Testament finds its highest fulfilment in the mission of the Son of God, who Himself becomes the new Temple, the dwelling of the Eternal One amidst us, the personified alliance (see John 2,19-22). Christ is the new Temple, the awaited and promised Temple, the Sanctuary of the new and eternal Alliance. Each time that Israel has looked to the Temple through the eyes of faith, each time that with these same eyes Christians look to Christ the New Temple and to the temples they themselves have built after the Edict of Constantine as the mark of Christ dwelling among us, they acknowledged in this mark the initiative of the Living God’s love for humankind. The Sanctuary is the permanent manifestation of the good news of our God’s initiative’s gratuitousness and faithfulness, the joyful announcement that "God does not love us because we are good and beautiful, but He makes us good and beautiful because He loves us" (Luther). Hence one enters the Sanctuary with a spirit of adoration and the work of grace, knowing we have been loved by the Other before we ourselves were capable of loving Him: it bears witness to the fact that life’s true vocation is not dissipation, but praise, acts of grace, peace and the joy of saying the thank-you of life and of the heart to the Lord. The theology of the Temple thereby leads us to experience the satisfaction of life’s contemplative dimension in all the variety and richness of its expressions.

Secondly, the Sanctuary is the tent in which the encounter takes place, the place of humankind’s alliance with the Eternal One and that among men. In going to the Temple the pious Israelite rediscovers here and now the faithfulness of the God of the promise and the gift of the election of its people. In looking to Christ, the new Temple, the disciples are aware that the Christian God is always alive and present among them and for them. The temple is the place in which the Church always recognises herself as the new communion of saints: it is the Saint that by dwelling among His disciples and in their hearts brings His Temple alive. The stone Temple refers us to He who makes us a Temple of living stone, the Spirit of God that descends upon us to renew our hearts and lives and renders us one in Him. The Temple is the place of the Spirit, because it is the place in which God’s fidelity transforms us, according to the will of the Eternal One, into the people of life that comes from above, through the signs of the New Alliance, preserved and offered by the Temple. Among these there is first of all the Word of God: the Temple is pre-eminently the place of the Word, in which the Spirit calls to the faith and kindles the "congregatio fidelium". It is of extreme importance to associate the Sanctuary to a persevering and welcoming listening to the Word of God, which is not just any human word, but the living God Himself in the sign of His Word. Sacramental events are too places of the livings encounter with He who gives them life and nourishes them with eternally new life in the solace of the Holy Spirit.

One therefore comes to the Sanctuary of the living God, the mark of His presence and the place of a living and new alliance with Him, so that the Holy Sprit may again fill our hearts, so that the Word of God may resound alive for us, so that the grace of the Sacraments may release our hearts so often burdened by contradictions and sin and bestow upon us, pilgrims of the Lord, the strength to start again with renewed hope, to be transparent and brave witnesses for the Eternal One among men. Therefore the Church of living men in the living God is constantly renewed in the Sanctuary: the Sanctuary encourages our solidarity for others, to become living stones, supporting one another in building around the cornerstone that is Christ. There would be no point in experiencing the moment of the Temple, were this moment not to lead us to the moment of communion, mission and service, there where the glory of God is celebrated in the love and the willingness to help the weakest and poorest of His creatures. It is so that the Temple, memory of our origins in the Lord, becomes a continuous call to the love of God crucified for history and therefore for our own being sent to share with others the gift received from Him, to serve them while searching with them the path in communion.

The Sanctuary, memory of our origins in the Lord and the place of our alliance with Him, is finally the anticipation and prophecy of our final and definitive Homeland, which is the Kingdom of God, "all in all" (1 Cor 15,28). The sign of the Sanctuary not only reminds us of where we come from, or just who we are, but it opens our eyes enabling them to discern where we are going, which is our pilgrimage’s destination in life and in history. The historical Temple refers to celestial Jerusalem, our Mother, the city descending from God, adorned like a bride, eschatological Temple and Sanctuary of Glory, where there will be no more tears, nor sadness, nor pain, nor death. So the Sanctuary offers itself as a "mark" of theological hope, a reminder of a broader horizon, showing a glimpse of a promise that never disappoints. It is significant that also when facing the worst suffering believers have always felt the need to express a sign of hope building and rebuilding the Temple, the sanctuary of adoration and praise. The Sanctuary bears witness to the fact that we are created to always defeat death in Christ’s victory, until we shall be in the glory of the Saints. The community that celebrates its God in the Sanctuary hence remembers its inclination to be a pilgrim Church: the present Temple is not a point of arrival; by experiencing the beauty of the divine gift in it, believers acknowledge they have reached their destination, on the contrary they feel greater nostalgia for their Homeland, a greater desire for heaven. The Sanctuary becomes a call to the style of a poor and serving pilgrim Church, extended towards the Jerusalem of heaven we have not yet reached. Every time the community gathers in the Sanctuary, it does so to remind itself of the other Sanctuary, the city of the future, God’s dwelling place which we would like to create already in this world by committing our lives, and that we cannot avoid awaiting filled with hope and aware of our limitations. The mystery of the Temple thereby reminds the Church of its provisional character, of the fact that she is always in march towards a greater destination, the future homeland that fills the heart with hope and peace.

Precisely for these reasons, the Sanctuary – simply because it exists – is in opposition to all assumed mundane absolutes, all despotic power, all ideologies wishing to say everything about humankind, because it reminds us that there is another dimension, that of the Kingdom of God which must fully come. It is in the Temple that the Christians’ ethical-political vocation to be the evangelically critical conscience of human proposals in history, a vocation to bring unrest to consciences, to recall all men to their greater destiny, for which they must not become mediocre and impoverished in the short-sightedness of what is achieved, but must incessantly appear as ferment for a more just and human society for all, especially for those of our travelling companions who are younger and suffering most. In the Temple God’s people learn to be the Church of hope and joy. Those who have entered the mystery of the Sanctuary know that God is already at work in this human vicissitude, that is already – in spite of the darkness of present times – the dawn of the times to come, that the Kingdom of God is already coming and that therefore our hearts can already be filled with joy, trust, and hope, in spite of the current pain and death and tears and blood that run on the earth’s face. Psalm 122, one of the Psalms of ascent sung by the pilgrims travelling towards the holy Temple, says: "I rejoiced when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the Lord...". It is a testimony that echoes the entire theology of the Temple. As a "house of the Lord" the Sanctuary calls everyone to the horizon of the Promised Land and to the dimension of hope, to the certainty that in spite of everything and against all, in the end God will prevail, because in Christ He has already conquered the world. The Sanctuary is the mark of the prophecy, the certain sign that to hope is not a utopia, nor is it evasion, but an awaiting that does not disappoint, founded on He who rose from the dead and will return in glory, Christ the new Temple, Sanctuary of the ultimate and final fulfilment. This is the hope most urgently needed by the post-modern era – the one we live in...