The celebration of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica (the official cathedral of the Diocese of Rome) one thousand seven hundred and one years ago in 324AD) is an occasion to reflect on the architectural symbolism of a church.

The most foundational elements of a functioning church are surely the altar, the tabernacle, and the baptismal font. There is wide variety as regards their architectural style and location in the building. Typically, the baptismal font is placed at the entrance at the back of the church and the altar in an elevated section in the front of the church, called the sanctuary.

The tabernacle, flanked by a perpetually burning candle, is often beyond the altar, perhaps above the high altar against the eastward wall, if your church is old enough to have one. It may be placed in its own chapel somewhere else in your church. If you are seated in a pew in the nave, the main body of the building, you can probably locate each of these three items. To understand their significance, we must look at them from a symbolic or sacramental perspective.

The baptismal font: The story of creation begins with waters. They represent uninhabitable, unformed reality, chaos, death, and ultimately nothingness. God restrains darkness with light, separates the waters, and permits dry land to appear. He’s making a domain in which life can appear and ultimately human life with which he seeks to partner to complete his creation purpose. Baptism restarts that original purpose. It reestablishes your partnership with God, bringing you into Eden where the New Adam and Eve, Jesus and his mother, are now, giving you a place and a role in their new world.

The altar: An altar is a little mountain. And a mountain is the high place where heaven and earth are brought together. When you enter liturgical space, you move through the waters to the mountain. In other words, you make passage through the act of creation! And what happens on the altar is the sacramental accomplishment of the goal of creation, a real foretaste of the world’s purpose.

The tabernacle: This box takes its name from the tent in which the presence of God resided in the center of Israel’s camp as they made their pilgrimage through the desert after passing through the waters of the Red Sea in their miraculous deliverance from Egypt. In your church, it holds the reserve sacrament, the consecrated bread which is the sacramental presence of God made flesh. The tabernacle contains the tangible promise of God’s commitment to liberate the whole world through humanity united to himself. It is opened at the apex of the mass when this promise is renewed between God and you.

If you ponder these architectural items from the sacramental viewpoint, you will begin to see the world with new eyes. The church, in its most basic elements, is a microcosm of creation. Its architecture is meant to teach you the deepest truths about the world’s beginning and purpose.

W Chris Hackett

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