Friday, April 21 : Saint John Henry Newman

The Jewish Temple, visible and material, was confined to one place. It could not be a home for the whole world, nay not for one nation, but only for a few out of the multitude. But the Christian Temple is invisible and spiritual, and hence admits of being everywhere… Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4,23). “In spirit and in truth;” for unless his Presence were invisible, it could not be real. That which is seen is not real; that which is material is dissoluble; that which is in time is temporary; that which is local is but partial. But the Christian Temple is wherever Christians are found in Christ’s Name; it is as fully in each place as if it were in no other; and we may enter it, and appear among its holy inmates, God’s heavenly family, as really as the Jewish worshipper betook himself to the visible courts of the Temple. We see nothing; but this I repeat, is a condition necessary to its being every where. It would not be everywhere, if we saw it anywhere; we see nothing; but we enjoy every thing. And thus is it set before us in the Old Testament, whether in prophecy or by occasional anticipation. Isaiah prophesies that “it shall come to pass, that the Mountain of the Lord’s House shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow into it” (Is 2,2). And it was shown by anticipation to Jacob… when he saw in his dream “a ladder set upon the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and behold the Angels of God ascending and descending on it” (Gen 28,12), and to Elisha’s servant when “the Lord opened the eyes of the young man … and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” (2 Kings 6,17). These were anticipations of what was to be continually, when Christ came and “opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers;” and what that opening consisted in, St. Paul tells us—”Ye are come,” he says, “unto Mount Sion, and unto the City of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of Angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in heaven” (Heb 12,22).
maronite readings – rosary,team