By JAMES MONTI
Anyone who has ever done any long-distance driving has likely experienced the wonder and sense of mystery that crossing the border from one town or village to another often brings, a sense of discovering and experiencing a new realm not seen before.
In the ancient world and in medieval Europe, the impact of these crossings was accentuated and made all the more dramatic by the presence of city walls that totally enclosed a town or city, with entry possible only by means of a gate or portal. Many of these city fortifications have remained standing to the present day. Biblical Jerusalem is the supreme earthly example of this, with the Sacred Scriptures speaking of the splendor of entering its gates. And in the Book of Revelation, we learn that the city awaiting our arrival beyond this life, the Heavenly Jerusalem, is a walled and gated city.
But in addition to such geographical boundaries, there are architectural ones as well, from the door to a home to the great doors to a cathedral. Across the centuries, the Church in her liturgy has made much of the rich symbolism of the boundaries that circumscribe the House of God both at its points of entry and within, where further boundaries set apart what is most sacred.
The setting of such boundaries to encompass the sacred was established by God Himself, beginning with His admonition to Moses from the burning bush on Mount Sinai: “Do not come near; put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5). The instructions that God gave to Moses for the construction of the Tent of Meeting enclosing the Ark of the Covenant, and for the fashioning of the Ark itself, are all about enclosing a sacred space or object for the worship of God. These boundaries have taught man through his senses the stark difference between the sacred and the profane, between what is of Heaven and what is of Earth.
Sacred boundaries, far from making man feel hopelessly “excluded” from the realm of God, have instead fostered the human heart’s longing to cross in mind and spirit the threshold of the House of God, of the sanctuary of God: “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” (Psalm 122:1); “Then I will go to the altar of God, / to God my exceeding joy…” (Psalm 43:4); “How lovely is thy dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! / My soul longs, yea, faints for the courts of the Lord…” (Psalm 84:1-2); “When shall I come and behold the face of God?” (Psalm 42:2); “O Lord, I love the habitation of thy house, / and the place where thy glory dwells” (Psalm 26:8).
The four walls of a church establish a boundary that reserves as sacred the piece of earth that is encompassed within. The facade of the church in particular serves as the dramatic point of transition for those who enter. In a presentation concerning the fitting orientation of church design in relation to the centrality of the altar, the architectural scholar Duncan Stroik says of the facade, “…the exterior creates a threshold, so that in crossing it people understand that they are entering a realm set apart for communion with God and his people” (The Church Building as a Sacred Place: Beauty, Transcendence, and the Eternal, Chicago, Hillenbrand Books, 2012, p. 30).
In a 2006 essay, the Dominican scholar Fr. Gabriel Pivarnik, OP, observes how the Church has had a long tradition of beginning many of her liturgical rites at the doors of the church, citing examples from the celebration of the Sacraments of Baptism and Matrimony, as well as the beginning of the Easter Vigil, the beginning of the funeral Mass, and the rite of consecrating a new church. To this list we might add the evocative example of the ceremonies for re-entering the church during the Palm Sunday procession as found in the medieval liturgical books and in the Traditional Latin Rite. Fr. Pivarnik explains the great importance of this entrance symbolism, noting, “..to walk through the doorway of a dedicated church is to recognize a distinct and profound change in reality — from the secular to the sacred, from death in sinfulness to life in the Gospel, from condemnation to salvation” (“People of the Door and of the Doorkeeper,” Pastoral Music, vol. 30, n. 3, February-March 2006, p. 17).
The prayers and liturgical actions of the rite of consecrating a new church as found in the 1595-1596 edition of the Pontificale Romanum are particularly illustrative in this regard:
“. . . the Bishop, having received his miter, approaching the door of the church, strikes it once with the lower part of his crozier, over the threshold, saying in an intelligible voice: ‘Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lifted up, O eternal gates: and the King of Glory shall enter in’ [Psalm 23:7 Latin Vulgate]. The deacon, being inside, says in a high voice: ‘Who is [this] King of Glory?’ [Psalm 23:8]. The Bishop responds: ‘The Lord who is strong and mighty: the Lord mighty in battle’ [Psalm 23:8].
[Later in the rite:] “. . . before he should enter, he [the Bishop] dips the thumb of his right hand in the holy Chrism, and with it, in the manner of a cross, he signs the exterior door of the church, saying:
“‘In the name of the Fa + ther, and of the Son + , and of the Holy + Spirit. O door, may you be blessed, sanctified, consecrated, signed, and commended to the Lord God; O door, may you be the entrance of salvation, and of peace; O door, may you be the peaceful gate, through Him, who Himself has been called the Gate, Jesus Christ our Lord, who with the Father, and the Holy Spirit lives, and reigns, God, world without end.’ R. ‘Amen.’
“. . . the priests lift up the bier of relics, and in entering the church processionally with the clergy, and the people, the Bishop with his miter begins, and the schola continues the antiphon: ‘Saints of God, enter, for the habitation of thy throne has been prepared by the Lord; as also the faithful people with joy follow your way; that you may supplicate the majesty of the Lord for us. Alleluia.’ Another antiphon: ‘The souls of the Saints rejoice in the heavens, who have followed the footsteps of Christ; and because they have exuded their blood for love of Him, therefore they rejoice with Christ without end.’ Meanwhile they go processionally through the church” (text in Manlio Sodi and Achille Triacca, eds., Pontificale Romanum: Editio Princeps (1595-1596), facsimile edition, MLCT 1 (Vatican City: © Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), pp. 303, 355-357 (original pagination).
Within the confines of the church edifice, there are further liturgical boundaries, beginning with the point of separation between the nave and the sanctuary that for many centuries has been clearly delineated by the presence of an altar rail. Additional borders are created by the successive steps within the sanctuary that set apart the altar from the rest of the sanctuary. And finally, to enclose the All-Holy Presence of God Himself within the sanctuary, there is the door to the Tabernacle. Art historian Achim Timmermann, who has studied extensively the medieval Eucharistic shrines known as sacrament houses, says of the doors to these shrines (which served essentially the same function as Tabernacles) that they represented “a threshold between two worlds — between outside and inside…[between] man and God…[and between] earth and Heaven,” “a visual and cognitive crossing point” and “a spiritual passage” (“Thresholds, Secrets and Revelations around the Shrines of German Gothic Sacrament Houses,” in Ilia M. Rodov, ed., Enshrining the Sacred: Microarchitecture in Ritual Spaces, New York, Peter Lang, 2022, pp. 59, 61, 64).
An Enchanting
Sense Of Mystery
In this context, one should bear in mind that while exposition of the Blessed Sacrament openly visible in a monstrance is a particularly splendid, glorious, and wondrous form of Eucharistic adoration, prayer before a closed Tabernacle also has its own distinctive blessings, for the concealment of the Blessed Sacrament behind the Tabernacle door and the Tabernacle veil evokes a powerful sense of mystery and awe. This sense of mystery and awe imparts to the soul a heightened spiritual vision of our hidden God.
This amazing paradox of concealment of the sacred fostering a truer vision with the eyes of the soul is aptly reflected in the designs of the gothic sacrament houses, which as Achim Timmermann has found, draw the eyes to gaze intently upon the shrine, sometimes catching an elusive glimpse of the Host itself through a grilled opening, but at the same time barring physical vision from seeing further, creating an enchanting sense of mystery which serves to remind the worshipper that what lies beyond the shrine door will only be fully seen when the soul attains the Beatific Vision in Heaven.
The design of gothic sacrament houses often casts the shrine door as a virtual portal or window of Heaven. The interior of the innermost chamber within the shrine, the chamber where the vessels holding the Blessed Sacrament were placed, was sometimes painted with stars to represent Heaven. An especially striking example of a painted shrine interior dating from about 1480 is found in the medieval church of St. Ludgeri in Norden, Germany; the inner walls of the Eucharistic chamber feature painted images of four lavishly vested angels bearing candles and incense, seeming to keep a continual watch of adoration round about the Blessed Sacrament, as Achim Timmermann observes (ibid., pp. 82-83).
There is a further theological significance in the setting of boundaries to the divine. It is Our Lord Himself who repeatedly speaks of the very real possibility of finding ourselves cast outside the Kingdom of God by our own doing, by rejecting Him and His Commandments. No one has the authority to say Our Lord had it wrong and to claim instead that there is no such exclusion from the Kingdom of God. Tearing down the boundaries that God Himself by His holy Commandments has set to our human conduct does nothing but create a formless waste. There can be no genuine City of God without such ramparts.
All the current “synodal” rhetoric about expanding the “tent” of the Church to put everyone inside and automatically confer on everyone without exception the status of practicing Catholics regardless of whether they actually accept or keep the Commandments is a formula for destruction.
The boundaries that transition us from the secular to the sacred in the House of God and which set us on the straight and narrow path of virtue in our moral lives can and will lead us to the gate of Heaven at our journey’s end, if we but heed them. Procedamus in pace. In nomine Christi!
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