Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

The chapel at
St Meinrad Archabbey

Moses did exactly as the LORD had commanded him.
On the first day of the first month of the second year
the Dwelling was erected.
It was Moses who erected the Dwelling.
He placed its pedestals, set up its boards, put in its bars,
and set up its columns.
He spread the tent over the Dwelling….

The author of Exodus goes to great lengths to describe Moses’ building of the mobile shrine where the Hebrews could worship the Lord in the desert. In this fortieth chapter he intones the words as the Lord had commanded eight times. No detail was too minute for the Lord’s attention or Moses' scrupulous compliance.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews reflected on this passage from Exodus and saw Jesus entering the heavenly temple which Moses had seen in a vision. He described it as

“the sanctuary and… true tabernacle that the Lord, not man, set up.…
They worship in a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary, as Moses was warned when he was about to erect the tabernacle. For he says, "See that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain."

This heavenly temple where God dwells and Jesus serves as priest is the original place of worship; all temples, churches and shrines are pale imitations of that Holiest of Holies.

The Gospel of Saint John will go one step further, describing Jesus’ body as the temple:

Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Pope Benedict XVI, in the second volume of his book, Jesus of Nazareth, underlines the lack of controversy among Christians as they dismissed temple attendance. The holiest shrine of the Jewish people, the original "Mecca" before Mohammed put Mecca on the Muslim map, drew pilgrims from all over the known world. Fidelity to God without the temple or the holy city of Jerusalem seemed inconceivable, and yet the newly baptized Christians showed little interest in it. The Holy Father uses that lack of interest -- that dog that doesn't bark -- to remind scholars and all Christians that Jesus was not simply reforming the Jewish religion. He actually intended to start a new religion! There are many more persuasive arguments to that effect in his book. 

Jesus is the Temple where we meet God face to face. As Saint Peter insisted, "There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved." There is no further need to travel to Jerusalem, or even to Rome. Jesus comes to us as we pray each day in our homes and each Sunday in our churches. 

If God's presence required scrupulous attention to every detail in Moses' day, the pervasive Spirit of God requires only a humble, repentant heart today.