Homily - Closing of the Eucharistic Congress

Homily – St. Ninian’s Cathedral marking the Closing of the Eucharistic Congress, October 23, 2005
by H.E. Most Rev. Raymond J. Lahey, Bishop of Antigonish.

Above the tabernacle in the church of St. Andrew in Boisdale are the same Gaelic words found above the sanctuary of this Cathedral: “Tighe Die,” “the house of God”. These words serve as a vivid reminder that in our Catholic tradition we have always provided a dwelling place for the presence of God on earth.

The whole church, of course, is the house of God in a larger sense, and a home for the people God makes his own in Christ. But in a very real way the tabernacle is a concrete and universal sign that in our world today God is truly present: it is a home for God among us. We do not need to see the Blessed Sacrament; the sanctuary lamp burns bright nearby night and day as a sign of Christ’s presence. And because we believe that here the Lord is truly present among us, it is our Catholic tradition to reverence the tabernacle with a genuflection when we approach it.

Indeed, the tabernacle is something truly awesome, for it reflects our belief that God took the most common elements of our world – simple food and drink – and made them the sacrament of his abiding presence in Christ. For our Savior was not overcome by the power of the Cross, but in the arms of God was raised from the dead and ascended from this world to bring us with him to the right hand of the Father. But he did not leave us; he told his disciples: “I am with you always, until the end of time.” (Mt 28.20) And that these words would be true not just figuratively, but in the most real way possible, he left us the Eucharist as the sacrament of his own Body and Blood. God wanted us to know that the very person of Jesus Christ is today the eternal seal of the new covenant he has made with humankind, a covenant to complete the one he had made of old and had sealed then with the beauty of a rainbow. God wanted us to know that in Jesus Christ, truly present among us, heaven is lovingly married to earth, and earth to heaven.

The tabernacle, the little house of God, reminds us always that God has made a home among us. Here we continue the great tradition of former times, for the Hebrew scriptures constantly spoke of the tent of God pitched among humankind, a tent that was a sign of his dwelling place among people. And to house the Ark of the Covenant, the symbol of God’s presence, King David had provided a tent called the Holy of Holies as the central sanctuary within the great temple of Jerusalem.

But our tabernacles today house not a symbolic presence of God, not the modern-day equivalent of tablets of stone, but, under the appearances of bread and wine, the living presence of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the eternal Word made flesh for our sake. Moreover, the letter to the Hebrews eloquently reminds us that this presence of Christ was not brought about in some mystical way but by the real shedding of his own human blood: “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” (Heb 9.12) And to underline this transition on the Cross from the former tent of God’s presence to the new, St. Matthew’s Gospel notes that at the moment of the death of Christ, the veil of the Jerusalem temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

Thus we can never approach the tabernacle of the Lord’s presence without being brought immediately to the altar of his sacrifice. The Lord’s presence in the tabernacle is never static, but is always dynamic. The outward signs of bread and wine draw us always into his sacrifice on the Cross: his body being broken for us, the cup of his blood being poured out. And so even in our act of adoration we enter into the Lord’s Paschal Mystery that we share most fully in our celebration of the Eucharist. For it was by that sacrificial action of Christ dying on the Cross that God could raise us up with him to newness of life. It was by that action that the Eucharistic meal of Christ’s body and blood was prepared for us. It was by it that same action that God established the new and eternal covenant of which the sacramental presence of Christ is the sign. The three can never be separated.

Here the principle of unity is the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit, solemnly called down upon the bread and wine before the words of consecration, who transforms them into Christ’s Body and Blood. It is the same Holy Spirit who after the consecration is again called down upon the people who share the Lord’s Body and Blood so that they too may be transformed into what they receive. It is the Holy Spirit who was given up by Christ to his disciples below as his final gift as he died on the Cross. It is the Holy Spirit who was the first gift of Christ to his disciples when he breathed upon them after his rising from the dead. It is the Holy Spirit who was the abiding gift of Christ to the Church when at Pentecost his disciples were sent out into the world.

It is the one Spirit who draws us into unity with Christ at Baptism, and who seals us at our Confirmation, that we can be the one Body of Christ who offers the Eucharist with him. It is the Spirit who in the Eucharist draws us into unity with the Pope, with our own bishop, and with the Church of God throughout the world. It is the Spirit who keeps us in unity, who at every Eucharist renews us as one Bread, one Body, in the Lord. It is the one and same Spirit who accompanies us in the diversity of our gifts that he himself has given as we go forth from the Eucharist to love and serve the Lord in the world.

Today’s Gospel does not let us forget that the heart of Eucharistic unity is love: the faithful love of a Father who never abandons us, the sacrificial love of his Son who offered his life for each of us, the inspiring love of the Holy Spirit who brings us into a communion of love and kindles in our own hearts the fire of love for God and for others. Without that love our participation in the Eucharist is simply a ritual action. With it - a love for God from the heart, and a love for others as having the same God-given dignity as ourselves - we are drawn by the Eucharist, through with and in Christ, and in the unity that is the Holy Spirit, into the very life of God. Then what we do here on earth brings us even now to share the life of God in heaven. It was the love of Christ for us even unto death that made him present to us on earth today; it is our own love and unity with him and with his sisters and brothers in our world that in the Eucharist unites us to him and draws us in our own time into his presence.

And our first reading is a vivid caution that just as Christ’s love for us in the Eucharist was sacrificial, so must be our love for others as we go forth from the Eucharistic table. It is a love that reaches out, even first of all, to the stranger and the refugee, to the widow and the orphan, to the single parent and the homeless youth, to the poor, the oppressed, and to those who call to us in their need. This Eucharistic love is not a love that seeks reward, but a love that seeks instead to give - and to serve, just as Christ himself came to serve. It is this love that in time, just as it brought Christ into the arms of his Father, will bring us into the home of God and into his presence for eternity.

For as a Eucharistic people we are constantly drawn forward: from the house of God’s presence on earth where we adore the Lord in awe and wonder, to the Eucharistic celebration where we truly enter into the life of God through the paschal sacrifice of Christ made present anew to us; from the Eucharistic table to the wider world around us, where we become for others the sacrificial presence of Christ, our own self-giving love for them, especially for those most in need, being signs of Christ’s Body broken and his Blood outpoured for all the world.

One day that ongoing pilgrim journey will end. We will strike the tent of our own presence here on earth, and if we have been a faithful member of God’s Eucharistic people, there will open to us not the tent of God, not any temporary dwelling place, but that great eternal mansion where God has prepared rooms for us all, where we will enjoy God’s presence face to face for ever. And just as we now say in simple prayer as we adore and share the Eucharistic presence of the Lord on earth, then we will be able to acclaim in glorious exuberance: “How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord God of hosts!” (Ps 84.1) Amen.

	Confirmation Schedule 2005