The Entire Thought

Holy Spaces

Israel’s first holy spaces were places where a human being had experienced God. That encounter could have occurred anywhere, from a mountaintop to a running brook, from an expanse of desert to a verdant forest. Meetings with God were often memorialized by a stone or pile of stones placed on the spot so that subsequent passersby would realize they were on holy ground and afford that place the reverence it was due. Gradually, holy places became more permanently established, as in the tent of meetings referenced in today’s first reading. Eventually, the movable tent evolved into a stationary temple and was recognized as the holiest place for meeting and communing with God.
With the institution of the temple, as Jerome H. Neyrey has pointed out, “maps" were drawn to
designate the varying degrees of holiness in certain spaces (The Social World of Luke-Acts, Hendrickson
Publishers, Peabody, Mass.: 1991). Within the temple there were 10 degrees of holiness, with the Holy of Holies being holiest of all. Holiness was not determined solely by personal piety or righteousness but by nearness to the presence of God, who was thought to be enthroned in the Holy of Holies over the Ark of the Covenant. When the ark was given a permanent place of residence in the temple which Solomon built, God’s holiness was thought to fill that place with glory.
With the coming of God in Jesus Christ, holiness took up residence in a new location. No longer would
humans commune with God solely in the precincts of the temple, with its varying degrees of holiness. Rather,
holiness itself had come to live within the parameters of the human condition, and humanity itself became a holy space. This wonder is celebrated in today’s Gospel as Luke tells the story of Jesus’ conception. Through the power of the Most High and Holy God, the very Spirit of God overshadowed Mary, and she became what the early church was proud to call the living Ark of the Covenant. A holy place, a sacred space by virtue of the child she conceived and carried, Mary is held out to Advent believers as both an example and an inspiration.
Just as Mary welcomed the Spirit and brought forth Jesus, thereby becoming a holy space that God fully
occupied, so did Mary become the place where others could come to encounter the God who dwelled within her. In this, she showed herself to be an authentic disciple. Her discipleship continues to teach us how to make room in our lives for God, for Jesus, for the Spirit, and thereby to become the holy places and sacred spaces of which this world is in so much need.
This special role of ours as living sanctuaries where God chooses to dwell and through whom God chooses to be revealed is most poignant during Advent. We who await the Coming One often prepare symbols of welcome: the manger, the crèche, the cave, the inn. But in truth, all these symbols are to be realized in each of us. We are the empty crèche awaiting the presence of God. Individually, and especially together as church, we are the living place made holy by God’s presence.
At times, however, we are like the inn of ancient tradition where there was no room and from which Mary and Joseph were turned away. Too many worries, too many projects, too many parties, too much shopping, too many gifts, too many bills — all these can crowd their way into the empty place where God wishes to enter and dwell in divine fullness. Therefore, Advent reminds us to clear a space, to empty the clutter that crowds our lives and to create a welcome for God. Through our praying, through our hoping and through our yearning for the Holy One, we become that quiet silence and ever-widening welcome which God will fill.
But the God who comes to fill us also dares us to relinquish our expectations so as to recognize the divine holiness that comes in everyday faces. Dorothy Day called it “making room for Christ" (Selected Writings, Robert Ellsberg, ed., Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y.:1992). There is no use in saying that we’ve been born 2,000 years too late to welcome Christ, said Day. “On the contrary, it is with the voices of our contemporaries that he speaks. With the eyes of store clerks and children, he looks at us. With the hands of slum dwellers and suburban housewives, he reaches out. He walks with the feet of the soldier and the tramp. With the heart of all in need, he longs for us to shelter him. And, the giving of shelter or food or welcome to anyone who asks or needs it, is giving to Christ and making room for his holiness to dwell within.”


Patricia Sanchez
Celebration, December 21, 2008

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