TELLING TALES ABOUT TABERNACLES

Entering a city suburban church last week - one I hadn’t visited for some years - and seeing no tabernacle, I felt very sad.

The Blessed Sacrament was there of course, but I had to walk up the aisle searching before I found the  tabernacle tucked away in an alcove.

After Mass (the first Mass as it happens, that the new, young parish priest had celebrated in that church) in the porch, Father introduced himself. I said I was a visitor and I was disappointed not to see the tabernacle centre-stage, where it used to be in that church.

I was thinking, here’s a new broom; he’ll want to sweep clean, he'll want to put the tabernacle in its proper place. He might need encouragement.

“Oh, but the tabernacle’s there,” said Father. “It’s on the side wall, in an alcove.”

“Exactly,” was what I wanted to say, but I didn’t. Instead I mentioned what Canon Law has to say about where it ought to be.

A woman standing nearby said, “We didn’t want it” (the tabernacle being moved off-side), “but we were over-ruled.”

I thought, this priest is new to this church, to these people, and to his bishop. I mentioned the fact that in the cathedral of that diocese also, the tabernacle is missing from the church.

“I’m one for the quiet life,” said Father.

I thought of Pope Francis’ message, on the recent feast of the conversion of St Paul, for future priests. They must reject the temptation, Pope Francis says, to be ‘normal’.

“The normality for us (priests)", said the Pope, "is pastoral holiness, the giving of life. If a priest decides merely to become a normal person he will be a mediocre priest, or worse.”

Our priests certainly need encouragement - and the best encouragement is being there with our priests at Mass, not just on Sundays but at weekday Masses as well.

(But I'm thinking this priest probably went back to his presbytery very relieved that I was a visitor.)