Chapter 2
Sacred Places—The Significance of the Church Building
Ratzinger, J. (2000). The Spirit of the Liturgy (J. Saward, Trans.; pp. 62–63). Ignatius Press.
EVEN THE STAUNCHEST opponents of sacred things, of sacred space in this case, accept that the Christian community needs a place to meet, and on that basis they define the purpose of church buildings in a non-sacral, strictly functional sense. Church buildings, they say, make it possible for people to get together for the liturgy. This is without question an essential function of church buildings and distinguishes them from the classical form of the temple in most religions. In the Old Covenant, the high priest performed the rite of atonement in the Holy of Holies. None but he was allowed to enter, and even he could do so only once a year. Similarly, the temples of all the other religions are usually not meeting places for worshippers but cultic spaces reserved to the deity. The Christian church building soon acquired the name domus ecclesiae (the house of the Church, the assembly of the People of God), and then, as an abbreviation, the word ecclesia (“assembly”, “church”) came to be used, not just of the living community, but also of the building that housed it. This development is accompanied by another idea: Christ himself offers worship as he stands before the Father. He becomes his members’ worship as they come together with him and around him. This essential difference between the Christian place of worship and the temples of the other religions must not, of course, be exaggerated into a false opposition. We must not suggest a break in the inner continuity of mankind’s religious history, a continuity that, for all the differences, the Old and New Testaments never abolish. In his eighteenth catechesis (23–25), St. Cyril of Jerusalem makes an interesting point about the word convocatio (synagogē-ekklēsia, the assembly of the people called together and made his own by God). He rightly points out that in the Pentateuch, when the word first makes its appearance with the appointment of Aaron, it is ordered toward worship. Cyril shows that this applies to all the later passages in the Torah, and, even in the transition to the New Testament, this ordering is not forgotten. The calling together, the assembly, has a purpose, and that purpose is worship. The call comes from worship and leads back to worship. It is worship that unites the people called together and gives their being together its meaning and worth: they are united in that “peace” which the world cannot give. This also becomes clear in relation to that great Old and New Testament archetype of the ekklēsia, the community on Sinai. They come together to hear God’s Word and to seal everything with sacrifice. That is how a “covenant” is established between God and man.
- The Theological significance of the Church building is drawn from the purpose of those gathered there. The purpose is the worship of God, which is made possible through listening to God’s word and through sacrifice. If the Eucharist becomes simply a meal shared between friends, or even between disciples, and loses its sacrificial character, the worship of God loses its basis.
- It is incumbent upon us to recall and draw out from the liturgy the sense of sacrifice because, now that it is no longer presented with all the drama of the crucifixion, we can more easily lose sight of the sacrificial dimension.
