“House of God and Gate of Heaven” (Gn.28:17)
Fr. Campbell
Before Our Lord Jesus Christ ascended to the Father, He sent His Apostles out to preach the Gospel:
“Go,
therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching
them to observe all that I have commanded you…” (Mt.28:19,20).
The
purpose of the Old Testament religion had now been fulfilled, since the
Messiah had come and established His Church. But the Jewish religious
leaders did not accept Jesus as the Messiah, and they could not believe
in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. They continued to worship in their
Temple as before, offering animal sacrifices to a God they did not know,
and praying for a Messiah who would never come. Jesus, their true
Messiah whom they had rejected, had wept over Jerusalem and commented on
its fate:
“Jerusalem,
Jerusalem! thou who killest the prophets and stonest those who are sent
to thee! How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a
hen gathers her young under her wings, but thou wouldst not! Behold,
your house is left to you desolate” (Mt.23:37,38).
The
desolation of the city would be complete forty years after Our Lord’s
Resurrection, when the Romans would destroy Jerusalem and the Temple
within it, leaving not even a stone upon a stone. The exiled Jews would
be left without a Temple and without a priesthood. They would have only
their teachers of the Law, their rabbis. There would be no more prophets
like Isaiah, and no more kings like David.
What
we call Judaism today is no longer the same religion that existed in
the time of Jesus. The central text of modern Judaism is the Babylonian
Talmud, which received its final form in the sixth century A.D. Yet the
Jews believe that one day the Temple will be restored, the priesthood
will be reinstituted, and animal sacrifice will once more be offered to
God in the Holy Place of the Temple. But when Our Lord spoke to the
woman at the well in Samaria, He had already foretold the end of the
worship of God in Jerusalem:
“Woman,
believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain (Gerizim)
nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father… God is spirit, and they
who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth” (Jn.4:21;24).
But
this does not deter the Jews and the Evangelical Christians of America
from being wildly enthusiastic about the building of a Third Temple.
This is especially true now that Donald Trump has moved the U.S. Embassy
to Jerusalem. Speaking at the official ceremony of its opening, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke repeatedly of the Temple, and then
said, with emphasis, “The Temple Mount is in our hands.” Plans for the
rebuilding of the Temple are well underway, and the Evangelical
preachers in the U.S. are collecting huge amounts of money from their
bedazzled flocks to help pay for it. Preparations for restored Temple
worship include the finding of the required red heifer. Not just any red
cow will do. Even a single white hair will disqualify her.
The
Jews also hope to recover the Ark of the Covenant to place in the
Temple Holy of Holies. The Ark was a container of wood overlaid with
gold, in which the tablets of the Ten Commandments were kept. The Ark
was lost when it was hidden away by Jeremiah to protect it from
desecration by the enemies of the Jews.
But
how could the Temple worship be restored? The reinstitution of animal
sacrifice would be an affront to God. After God’s Divine Son, Jesus
Christ, has shed His Precious Blood to atone for the sins of the world,
how could God accept “the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkled
ashes of a heifer” (Heb.9:13) as a sacrifice for sin? God Himself
signaled the end of Temple worship at the moment Jesus died on the
Cross, as we read in the Gospel of St. Matthew:
“But
Jesus again cried out with a loud voice, and gave up his spirit. And
behold, the curtain of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom…” (Mt.27:50,51).
Why,
then, do even the Evangelical Christians campaign for the restoration
of the Temple if God no longer chooses to dwell in the Holy of Holies?
Well, the Jews themselves believe that they can rebuild the Temple and
reinstitute Temple worship and the sacrificing of animals. And
Evangelical Christians believe that there must be a Temple in Jerusalem
because they think the Messiah will return and enter the Temple. But
there will be no Third Temple in Jerusalem.
We
must look elsewhere for the Temple. And, behold, here it is, right
before our eyes. Within it is the Ark of the Covenant, and the Holy of
Holies in which God still dwells among His people. Look at any true
Catholic Church, few as they are in these days. Look up into the
sanctuary. There you see the Altar of Sacrifice, with the Tabernacle in
which God dwells in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. To the left and
the right of the Altar we see the adoring angels, the cherubim, just as
they knelt in adoration at each side of the ancient Ark of the
Covenant.
This
mystery began when the Blessed Virgin Mary gave her consent to be the
Mother of the Messiah, and immediately began her journey through the
hills of Judea, just as the ancient Ark traveled in the time of King
David. As Mary greeted her cousin Elizabeth upon arriving at her home,
the infant John the Baptist jumped for joy in Elizabeth’s womb, just as
David danced before the ancient Ark as it arrived at its destination in
the Tabernacle, the tent David had prepared for it on Mount Sion. We now
worship God in the holy Tabernacle on our Altar, offering Him true
worship in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. As the patriarch Jacob
exclaimed after his dream of the ladder reaching up to Heaven: