Fourth Conference

Ark of the Covenant – Real Presence

Exodus, 25:8,9,10,11,16,22,40

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My dear brothers and sisters,

For many centuries Christians believed that the Lord God gave the Ten Commandments and the other precepts of the old Law, which governed their life of worship and their lives in community by means of personal dictation, much as an executive would dictate a letter to his or her secretary. It was believed that what Moses recorded in the Law given him on Mount Sinai was something completely unknown to human beings. So when, in the course of archaeological research among the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia, codes of morality somewhat similar to the Ten Commandments were discovered, many of the faithful were shocked, and many intellectuals began to disparage the notion that the Bible is the revealed Word of God. Eventually, though, these discoveries were seen to be a blessing in disguise, because it led to the distinction between the “revealed” Word of God and the “inspired” Word of God. Now we are able to speak about the “combined” authorship of the Bible as both human and divine. The Sacred Writer is used by God, moved by God the Holy Spirit to write, without losing any of his personal traits and characteristics, and to write out of his educational and cultural background. There is no doubt that Moses, having received the best possible education in Egypt as the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, and also as having acquired considerable knowledge of desert life while living with his father-in-law in the Sinai Peninsula, possessed an extremely rich background of knowledge and experience. This was certainly what made him such a suitable instrument for God’s purposes. That background was of human origin; nevertheless, by drawing from it under the influence of the Holy Spirit, the special light he received from on high enabled him to purge his human sources of error, and to apply the correctives. And it is admitted that the Law being passed on to subsequent generations was so vastly superior to other ancient Semitic moral codes.

The reason I mention all that is to highlight the fact that among the many things God divinely inspired Moses to incorporate into the Law of the Covenant, there were some instructions that were entirely new, and could not be ascribed to human sources, and they had to do with the construction of an ark (a box) to hold the tablets of the Law and some other things. Also, this ark was to be surmounted by a throne, the propitiatory, and all was to be enshrined within a tent, and within the tent in a special place called the Holy of Holies. The reason for all this was nothing less than to provide a dwelling place for God in their midst. He intended to remain truly present in a very special way upon the throne surmounting the ark. It was his determination to be accessible. He was not going to remain a far-off distant God, inhabiting inaccessible, remote heavens. It was His desire to be quite close to them, to receive them in audience, to have them come into His presence and stand before Him. In his farewell discourse in Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people: “and indeed, what great nation is there, that has its gods so near as Yahweh our God is to us whenever we call upon Him”. Since He had promised to be not only their God, but also their guide and protector, He needed to be right there when they needed Him. So He really needed to take up a local residence among them.

And we have evidence in subsequent events during the forty years of wandering that God was really there. Over and over again Moses went before God, present upon the propitiatory, to pray for the people, to receive the Lord’s instructions for the people, and to assemble them there to receive special messages. It was there at the tabernacle, close to the Lord God present within the Holy of Holies that Moses would hold court, so that it would be clear to the people that he, Moses, was only the instrument through whom the Lord Himself was passing judgment. On His part, the Lord God made His presence visible: By day a cloud hovered over the Tabernacle, and by night a pillar of fire. He wanted them to know that He took the covenant, His part of the Relationship very seriously.

In retrospect, we see why it is that God instructed the people to ask the Egyptians for their valuables when they were leaving. Scripture says that they “despoiled” Egypt. They needed all those precious ornaments and fabrics and furs in order to gild the ark, make the propitiatory and construct the tent-shrine (the Tabernacle) and to furnish it. This fact can be interpreted as symbolic of how the riches God has conferred on human nature and which are not taken away by the fall, under the influence of grace, are used to adorn and beautify a suitable dwelling for the Lord God in the depths of our souls.

In any event, we can now turn to a consideration of what the counterpart of the Ark of the Covenant might be in terms of our own spiritual journey toward the Promised Land. What do we have that fulfills a similar role? We keep in mind that the ark contained the Law; its cover was the throne of a merciful God who comes close to rescue them. You have all guessed correctly, the ark is a type of the Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Eucharist. Now we focus on it not as food, but as the abiding real-presence of Jesus in our midst. The Eucharist is that point in space and time where God is utterly accessible. Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit are there so we can realize in a practical way the relationships that exist between God and each one of us. It is this idea that is the inspiration behind that beautiful Latin hymn sung to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus: Cor, arca legem continens. I’ll try a rough translation:

1. Heart, ark containing the Law, not of the Old Servitude, but of Grace, Pardon and Mercy.

2. Heart, sanctuary of the New, untainted covenant, Holier than the ancient temple, more profitable than the rent curtain.

3. Charity willed that you be wounded, struck open, so that we might venerate the invisible wounds of love.

4. Under this symbol of love, Christ the High Priest offers His sacrifice, both the bloody and the mystical.

5. Who will not love this Lover in return? Who among the redeemed will not love and choose this Heart as his eternal dwelling?

When we remember that the Ark contained the tablets of the Law, which captured the essence of the Old Covenant, we can apply the same idea to the Blessed Sacrament. It is Jesus sacramentally but really present as Risen Lord, still bearing in His glorified humanity the marks of His Redemptive Sacrifice, the essence of the New Covenant: His Body and Blood given for us. God Himself speaks in Exodus 25:22, of the Ark of the testimony, that is the ark that bears witness to Him. The Blessed Sacrament, which veils the presence of Jesus under the appearances of the sacred host, bears witness to the Love of the Father for us and of our relationship to Him in the New Covenant. It bears witness to the vulnerability of Jesus Himself while He was on earth, who told us, “Love one another as I have loved you”, which command He Himself continues to observe in our midst in the Sacramental species.

Although in the Old Testament there are the faintest glimmerings of the truth that God is a Trinity, it was never revealed with the clarity we find in the New. God the Son and God the Holy Spirit were not known to the Israelites of the Old Covenant. So it is God the Father whom we encounter in the writings of the Old Testament. He is the one who made His presence known in the midst of the people. It was to Him that they had access. Let us not forget that Jesus, too, had come to give us access to God the Father. We are reminded by the Dutch Dominican Schillebeeck that Jesus is the “Sacrament of our Encounter with God”. As a Sacrament, Jesus not only is a sign that the encounter has occurred, but He also brings about our encounter with the Father. As you all know, when the Apostle Phillip said to Jesus: “show us the Father and it is enough for us: Jesus answered, “Phillip, I’ve been with you so long and you still don’t know the Father? He who sees me sees the Father”. And on the occasion when He was praying His High-Priestly payer to the Father at the last supper, Jesus said: “This is eternal life, to know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Without Jesus we would never attain to eternal life, because without Him we never would have come to know the Father. We are aware; of course, that we know not merely the fact that God the Father exists. We have gotten to know the Father in the same sense that we get to know the members of our families, and our best friends. We get to experience the Father as a person who enters into a personal relationship with us.

If someone were inclined to doubt that we needed to have Jesus present to us in the Eucharist in order that we may have access to the Father, it would be because he is aware that Jesus is present to us in so many different ways. Of course, we need Him in the Eucharist so that He can be the food of our souls, but after the Sacred Host is consumed, i.e., its accidents, its appearance of bread has disappeared, the abiding presence of Jesus in the blessed Sacrament ceases. So if He is with us in so many ways, why do we have to reserve Him in our tabernacles? After all, Jesus is present in Word, the Sacred Scriptures. He is present in the Eucharistic assembly. He is present wherever two or three are gathered together in His name. He is present in a needy fellow human being. Wouldn’t so many “presences” of Christ render unnecessary His abiding presence with us in the Blessed Sacrament?

The answer of course, is “no”, none of those other presences really satisfy our need to have Him always readily accessible, personally accessible, and through Him, to have the Father readily accessible. It is only in the Blessed Sacrament that we can go to Him and the Father for a one-on-one personal exchange.

When Jesus is present to us in His Word, He is present as revealing and making known all those truths that apply to each and every one of us in common, because they pertain to the “generic” so to speak, life of grace that we all share. We are addressed as members of a community, as members of the People of God. We learn through His Word the essential knowledge we need concerning Himself our common God, and concerning our common humanity. Nothing we are told in Sacred Scripture singles us out as individuals. In fact, it is the Word of God, which gathers us up and destroys our separateness and makes us one people, one body. Thus, there is no possibility of a strictly personal encounter with Jesus in His Word. When we hear or read Scripture, Jesus is truly acting upon us. But we can’t then personally act upon Him present in His Word. True enough, our reading of the Word often causes us to stop and raise our minds and hearts to Him in intimately personal prayer. But unless we are in His Eucharistic presence, He is not physically in our presence when we pray.

In somewhat the same way Jesus is present to us when we receive any of the other Sacraments. He truly acts upon us, so He has to be truly present. When we ask, where is a pure spirit, we are told: A pure spirit is present where it acts. He is sacramentally present to us in the one who ministers the Sacrament, and in and through the minister He either restores the life of grace to our souls, or deepens and strengthens it, and even adds new dimensions and powers to our life of grace as in the case of Confirmation, Matrimony and Holy Orders. But in all these cases the encounter with Him is rigidly formal. And He is present only as long as it is necessary to complete the Rite. And what He does for and in one in each of the sacraments mentioned He does for all, at least in kind, if not in intensity. Again, this does not give us His abiding physical presence as we have it in the Eucharist reserved in our tabernacles.

Another very wonderful way in which Jesus is present to us is the liturgical assembly. A liturgical assembly is really the Mystical Body in miniature. It is a kind of sacrament (in the sense of symbolizing what it achieves and achieves what it symbolizes), a sacrament of the Perfect Church, of the Kingdom fully realized, offering sacrifice, entering into communion with God the Father. Here again Christ is present but not as someone distinguishable from ourselves, except so far as He is sacramentally represented as Head in the presider of the assembly. There we are present to Him as members of His Body, as part of the Whole Christ. A personal, one-on-one encounter with Jesus is not possible while we are participating in the sacred liturgy except for those brief moments after sacramental communion.

Somewhat the same can be said of those occasions when Jesus is present where two or three are gathered in His Name, or in a needy fellow human being. Jesus is in the midst of the persons gathered in His name; what we do for a needy human brother or sister we do for Jesus. But in these instances we are supposed to be entering into a personal encounter with the others of the two or three, or personally encountering the needy person, as individuals in their own right. In the case of the needy person, we often make the mistake of approaching them as if they weren’t there. We approach with the intention of seeing Jesus there instead, and thus ignoring them and their individual personal attributes and circumstances. If we did not keep in mind that Jesus said, “what we do for them we really do for Him”, we would probably never go near them. This is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. Surely Jesus wants us to assist a needy person by relating directly and immediately to him as a person as he is in himself, not for a reason or motive distinct from himself. (I am not sure I am making my meaning clear.)

In any event, I’m trying to emphasize that we have Jesus present to us in all those other ways, but not presently physically as in the Blessed Sacrament reserved on the altars. There, we can approach Him as individuals having distinguishing features, unique personalities, informally, not according to any set pattern or protocol. There is room for intimate, spontaneous exchange. The real value of the Eucharist reserved is that it satisfies the psychological need common to us all to have our loved one physically present to us, or at least readily accessible.

What would happen to a marriage in which the husband and wife only very seldom were able to enjoy one another’s company? What if they were very seldom able to be alone together? Could love endure? Whence the courage and fortitude to shoulder the responsibilities and to sacrifice personal ease and comfort for the good of the family? Even if little or nothing is said when alone together, the mutual physical presence is deeply rewarding and reassuring. There is a saying “Out of sight, out of mind”, and “Absence makes the heart grow fonder – for somebody else”. These sayings capture the collective experience of the human race.

Having Jesus present in the Blessed Sacrament offers us the consolation of going to Him whenever we need Him. There, in His presence, we ought to be as natural and spontaneous as we are with any very close friend. True, we must be reverent, but we don’t have to stand on ceremony. We should let our true selves come forth. Actually, we tend to hide certain things from people we love deeply, our closest friends, because we don’t want them to worry about us or to be an inconvenience to them, but we don’t have to do that with Jesus. He wants to hear and know everything about us, good, bad, joyful, sorrowful, especially those things that hurt or grieve us. He even wants us to complain to Him, remonstrate with Him, as did Holy Mother Teresa. Sure He already knows about those matters with His Divine knowledge, but He wants us to tell Him anyway, for our own sake, because it is so good, so healing for us.

In saying that, I am implying that we have the opportunity, while physically present to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, to actualize and deepen our relationship to Him as not only Best Friend, but also as the Bridegroom of our souls. Then when we get to the point where these relationships are so profoundly developed that we hasten to go to Him in His Eucharist presence, then this opens up mind-boggling possibilities when we remember all our other relationships with Him. This best, closest, dearest personal friend of mine, this most beloved, treasured spouse of my soul is also My God! He is my Redeemer, He is My Rescuer, My Healer, and He is My Rock and My Fortress. As my God, His Infinite Power and Wisdom are there for me. His Infinite Mercy is there for me. They are there for me because I am to Him a Best Friend, a very close Friend; my soul is His dearly beloved spouse. He wants to use all His Infinite resources to please me, just as I surrender all I am and have, limited and puny though they be, to please Him. The possibilities that I mentioned are those of intercessory power over His Heart.

As my Redeemer, Jesus has paid the price to free my soul from the power of Satan. The closer I am to my Eucharistic Jesus, the greater the assurance I have that Satan is utterly helpless to harm me.

As my Rescuer, Jesus snatches me from the dangers that surround me, dangers that threaten the life of my soul. The closer I come to Jesus in the Eucharist the more easily I am able to overcome temptations: Temptations against Faith, Hope, and Charity, against humility, purity and meekness. The more surely I am rescued from the tyranny of my own fallen human nature.

As my healer, Jesus cures all my wounds. His very presence binds up the wounds inflicted on my soul by my own personal sins. It is like oil and wine poured into them. His presence and His love are like the penetrating warmth that restores bruised, aching, worn out muscles. But His presence in the Eucharist also heals the wounds inflicted upon my mind and heart from without. My mind is wounded whenever error and falsehood are encountered. Even if by Faith I reject those errors, nevertheless the purity of my mind has been violated. And if that is the case with errors I detect, imagine the damage done by error and falsehood I do not detect. There is so much error and falsehood today: Error, or better, lies concerning the nature of God, lies concerning His Will for us His human children both individually and collectively, lies concerning morality, lies introduced concerning the Mysteries of our Faith: The Eucharist, the Incarnation, the two natures in Christ, The Resurrection, concerning the Virginity of Our Lady and her role as Co-redemptress and Mediatrix of all graces. My mind is especially wounded by the very subtle and insidious lies introduced into Church doctrine, morality and discipline by the New Age Movement: The lies that Hindu and Buddhist techniques are prayer, lies that equate our breath, our physical breathing with the breath of God, the Holy Spirit. The lie that Vatican Council has taught that we are not supposed to announce Christ to Hindu and Buddhist gurus. It is the physical presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament that heals me of the wounds my mind suffers every time it is assailed by those errors, especially when they proceed from the mouths of well-intentioned Catholics. No other presence of Jesus can heal the way His Real Presence in the Eucharist does.

Above all, Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist heals the wounds inflicted upon my heart. Which of us can say that he or she has not been made to suffer keenly on occasion because of unrequited love? Love is so important for our mental health that if we do not experience love, do not have assurance of self-worth that only being loved can supply, our spirits wither; our personality is warped and deformed. We meet so many people whose hearts are bruised and broken because so much dislike, if not hatred that has been their lot, or because they have been cast aside or otherwise rejected. Without the experience of being loved, it is impossible to live. Well, in the Blessed Sacrament, we have Jesus present as someone who loves us beyond our wildest hopes and dreams. The Eucharist is the living memorial of Jesus, the tremendous lover, who has exhausted His infinite capacity to give and surrender Himself to us. It is His Eucharistic Heart loving us that heals, repairs and renews our hearts, which are wounded for want to disinterested love. The greatest wound our hearts suffer from not being loved is that it is robbed of its power to love. Jesus’ presence to us in the Sacred Host reserved not only restores our power to love, but confers a power to love that even helps to restore the power to love to other hearts that have been broken for lack of love, or by unrequited love.

I like to think of the Sacred Host as a primary source of nuclear radiation. Anything left in the presence of a primary source of nuclear radiation becomes a secondary source of radiation. The Geiger counter can detect it. The longer we remain in the presence of the Eucharist, i.e., knowingly, and willingly, the more powerful secondary sources of Divine love we become. And we cannot afford to stay away from the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament too long, because then we would be in danger of losing all power to dedicate the love of Jesus to others. We lose the capacity to be secondary Eucharist’s.

We can say that in the Presence of the Eucharist we are the recipients of all the Spiritual works of Mercy from Him who is Incarnate Mercy. We know what they are: (1) Instruct the ignorant (2) Counsel the doubtful. (3) Admonish sinners. (4). Bear wrongs patiently. (5) Forgive offenses. (6) Comfort the afflicted. (7) Pray for the living and the dead.

Does not Jesus in the Eucharist instruct us about the nature of True Love, its vulnerability, and its total surrender to the beloved? Does not this very knowledge offer counsel when we are in doubt about the loving thing to do? Does it not also admonish us to make a complete break with sin, which caused Jesus to suffer so much, and which the Eucharist is the memorial? Does not His patience in the Eucharist, waiting and longing for souls to come to Him not inspire us to be patient too? And how can we not be forgiving, being reminded by the Blessed Sacrament how much has been forgiven us? How can we not yearn to be a comfort to others, seeing how comforting the memory of the cross, which the Eucharist recalls, has been to us in our affliction? And how can we not intercede with Him physically present before us for others, since He when we are absent is continually interceding for us before His Father.

The Church has always desired that we manifest how much we treasure the Real Presence of Jesus in our tabernacles, and especially when the Blessed Sacrament is exposed by surrounding Him with lights and flowers and vessels and furnishings of metal and fabric. This imitates the command of God that the Israelites ask the Egyptians to give them their precious possessions which were then used to build the tabernacle to enshrine the Ark, the visible sign of God’s abiding presence. We can let this be a symbol for us of how the Father and the Holy Spirit were enshrined in the human heart and soul of Jesus while on earth, and even more gloriously now in His glorified human heart and soul. We can think of our being often in the presence of the Eucharist reserved as if we were soft iron in the presence of a very powerful electromagnet. As the soft iron itself is transformed into a magnet, so are we, if docile and unresisting, transformed into Jesus. Then the command of God to Moses is fulfilled in us: Make everything according to the pattern I have shown you on the Mount, the pattern being Jesus Himself.

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