Faith's further vision...

 

Tabernacle, Ladye Chapel, St Francis’ Church, Melbourne (Casamento Photography)

“As a place the Church is a creation within creation, the royal residence of the Creator-King. To its privileged jurisdiction is granted the full royalty of the whole world.  Its laws are holiness.  Its atmosphere is grace.  Its forms are copies of divine things.  Its nature is transfigured with supernatural energies.  Its solemnities are celestial mysteries.  It is a life, and a giving of life. But it is not only a divine copy of divine things.  It contains divine things, and lives by them.  In peculiar ways of its own, it contains the Divine Persons.  Thus, its life is not a mere likeness of God, though it is a likeness of him. 

But, when faith looks upon his likeness, it sees a further vision.  The tabernacles of the Church blossom as with light; the lineaments of the Church fade as in a glorious conflagration, obliterated by the intensity of splendor; and behold! it is Jesus himself, God and man, within whose life we have been living; and the glory had been so gentle that we perished not! 

The mystery of the Blessed Sacrament is the truth of the life of the Church.  We can see and revere the magnificence of the Church. … To the eye of God the Church must look most wonderful. … when he had created the Church, not of earth and of his word, but of his Blood and Breath, its fair beauty so won upon him that he came into it, and multiplied himself, and hid himself, in her tabernacles, as the birds hide themselves within the mighty woods.”

 Frederick William Faber, D.D.

The Precious Blood (pgs 240-41)