From the National Catholic Register
by TRENT BEATTIE of the Register
Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison Wisconsin discusses diocesan deadline for suitable tabernacle placement.
Tags: Church Architecture, Liturgical art, Orthodoxy at Work
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| Defending Truth and Tradition in the Roman Catholic Church |
God is Near Us — by Josef Cardinal Ratzinger
This is a beautiful book, on the Eucharist as the Heart of Life, and the uncompromised and uncompromisable teaching of the Catholic Church on the Real Presence. Written by then-Cardinal Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVI, the book is a collection of lectures, pastoral letters and homilies, yet flows as a unified whole.
He builds on the transformative power of the Eucharist, and the “I” in the liturgy of the “we.” It was very helpful to me when, some time ago, I heard a priest speak of not personalizing our reception of the Eucharist; for example, he criticized those of us who put our heads down after Communion for private moments of thanksgiving with the Lord who has given Himself to us. I was pleased to see then Cardinal Ratzinger not only defending the practice, but recommending it. He writes of the point in the liturgy of the Mass, just before Communion when the ‘we’ of the celebration becomes ‘I’. For it is I who am not worthy that He should come under my roof….
He writes: “…we need a time of silence afterward, in which we converse quite personally with the Lord….In recent decades, perhaps, we have all far too much lost the habit of this. We have discovered anew the congregation, Liturgy as a communal celebration, and this is a great thing. But we also have to discover anew that fellowship requires the person. We must learn anew this quiet prayer before Communion and the silent time at one with the Lord, abandoning ourselves to Him.”
Soon after, he writes “We all know what a difference there is between a church that is always prayed in and one that has become a museum. There is a great danger today of our churches becoming museums and suffering the fate of museums: if they are not locked, they are looted. They are no longer alive. The measure of life in the Church, the measure of her inner openness, will be seen in that she will be able to keep her doors open, because she is a praying Church. I ask you all therefore from the heart, let us make a new start at this.”
And he goes on to explain how vital is prayer before the Blessed Sacrament:
“We have to seek again this kind of prayer….Only the praying Church is open. Only she is alive and invites people in; she offers them fellowship and at the same time a place of silence.”
I believe the prominence of the Tabernacle is absolutely related to achieving what Cardinal Ratzinger so urgently encouraged.