Haggai 1:15-2:9; 1 Peter 2:4-9; John 2:13-22: 5 November 2025
Ten years ago today our former Abbot and current Bishop Hugh consecrated, or re-dedicated our Abbey Church. The memory of that great event remains fresh in the mind of many of us: so rich and glorious was the liturgy; so fraught with multi-layered symbolism.
In many ways a liturgy of Church Dedication touches on the heart of our faith and of our Christian life. Its focus in the first place is Jesus Christ our Lord: his sacrificial death and his glorious resurrection; his living presence among us; his closeness, and his self-gift. Then also, necessarily, we celebrate the Holy Catholic Church, which is the Body of Jesus; his Kingdom, his City, his voice, his hands, his compassion, his prayer. We ourselves are members of that Body, that Church, by our baptism. So a Church Dedication is a celebration also of ourselves. Or rather: it’s a call to prayer, and to authentic and ever-deepening holiness of life. It’s a summons to us to be what we are; a reminder for us truly to live as befits those who belong to Jesus: we who have been redeemed and sanctified by him, we who are called to be one with him, and who are destined to be glorified with him. Finally of course, with hearts overflowing with gratitude, we celebrate the Church building itself: this Church, our Church; so familiar, and so greatly valued and loved.
Very frequently in holy Scripture we find the theme of a physical Temple of God, or house of God. The ancient Jews knew very well that God cannot be confined; that there is nowhere he is not present. Nevertheless, they believed that God Himself gave them a special place of his special presence; a place of worship, and of acceptable sacrifice; a place of divine encounter; a supremely holy place. So our Gospel today sets the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus there, in the Jerusalem Temple. And Jesus sweeps it all away. It’s a symbolic action, as St. John tells us: for “He was speaking of the Temple that was his Body” (2:21). For Jesus, as St. John’s Prologue states, is Himself God dwelling among us. So all that the Temple ever represented finds its fulfilment in Jesus.
In today’s second reading St. Peter takes up the Scriptural metaphor of the stone. That metaphor begins in Genesis with the dream of Jacob. Terribilis est locus iste, cried Jacob, as we sang in our Introit today (Gn 28:17): this place makes me afraid. So Jacob set up the stone he had used as a pillow, and consecrated it, calling it Beth-el, the abode of God, the gateway of heaven, the place of revelation and of promise. Centuries later, King David would start gathering building material to make a house for God. But according to the oracle of Nathan, on the contrary God would build David a house, that is, a royal dynasty. This would culminate in a Son of David who would also be Son of God, the destined Saviour and Messiah.
David’s son Solomon did build a Temple, but it was destroyed by the Babylonians, and God’s people were driven away into exile. And then, as a type of the Lord’s resurrection from the dead, that Temple was re-built. Our first reading from Haggai evokes this re-building. In this place I will give peace, says the Lord through Haggai. That text was taken as the motto of Pluscarden, also happily re-built after a long period of ruin and devastation.
According to Psalm 117 (118): the stone that the builders rejected has become the corner stone: this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes (v. 22). In context, this Psalm verse seems to refer to the re-building of the Temple. It emphasises that the work is God’s, not man’s; that God can work wonders from the most unpromising material; that His thoughts and ways are different from ours. This text is quoted in the New Testament a number of times, with the rejected stone always taken as a figure of Christ. In our reading today St. Peter cites it twice, linking it also with two texts from Isaiah. In Chapter 28 of Isaiah we read of a precious and chosen corner stone in Zion, to be laid by God himself (v. 16). Here the prophet is contrasting the City he saw, full of wickedness and infidelity, with a new Jerusalem that is to come. This new City will be quite different. It will be pure, faithful, righteous, holy. Peter of course applies this prophecy to Christ and to us. He is that stone, not only precious and chosen, but living. We ourselves are in consequence to be living stones, built upon him. This idea of a living Temple of God, which we are, is also of course much developed and dwelt on by St. Paul (cf. esp. Eph 2:19-22; Rm 9:32, 1 Cor 3:16, 2 Cor 6:16 etc).
But in today’s short second reading, Peter is not yet finished with Isaiah. For the prophet also speaks of a stone of stumbling (8:14). That idea occurs also in the prophet Daniel. There we read of a stone which smashes the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, image of all earthly Kingdoms. This stone then itself grows into a mountain, filling the whole earth, image of the Kingdom of God (2:34ff). So there are two Kingdoms, that of Nebuchadnezzar and that of God, and for St. Peter, the dividing line between them is faith: faith in Jesus Christ, in whom alone we have salvation (Acts 4:11).
According to the Catholic imagination, and let me say, genius, and according to the whole sacramental order or economy, just as the symbol of the stone and the Temple are made personal and concrete in Jesus, and then in us believers, so that symbolism is by extension applied also to our own Churches and Altars. If a person can be spoken of as a building, so a building can be treated as if a person. So by solemn rituals the Bishop baptises and anoints and consecrates the Church, setting it apart from the unredeemed world, from false and unholy worship, from the power of the devil. Here now God’s holy people are gathered in faith and hope and love. Here God’s holy word is preached. Here Jesus is present, above all in the Holy Mass, and in the Blessed Sacrament: Jesus sacrificed; Jesus alive; Jesus for us, with us.
Pluscarden’s re-built Church is a bit of a mess. 15th century rubble-fill spoils so many of its proportions and sight lines; the 16th century Dunbar Chapel blocks off light from the North Transept aisle; the side Altars have all vanished, as has the nave, and our post-Conciliar main Altar is central, rather than at the East end, as originally designed.
Yet for a monk, how much the lines from the Psalm resonate here!
One thing I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life… (Ps 26:4).
O Lord I have loved the beauty of your house, and the place where your glory dwells (Ps 28:8).
And again: How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, God of hosts! My soul is longing and yearning, is yearning for the courts of the Lord…. They are happy who dwell in your house, for ever singing your praise ... Better one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; better to stand on the threshold of God’s house, than to dwell in the tents of the wicked (Ps 83:1,4,10).