Guild of the Servants of the Sanctuary
Epiphany Festival Sermon: Saturday 7^th January 2006

From the Gospel for today’s Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord: “When you have found him, let me know, so that I too may go [to the place] and do him homage”. 

When preparing for today, thinking about “a Guild for Servants of the Sanctuary” set my mind on giving consideration to the importance of “holy space”. If we are to have servants – people who are dedicated to service – what is it that they are focussing upon? Or more importantly – why it is important and what should we be doing to preserve its sanctity? Herod enquired of the wise men where the holy place was.

I suspect that is times gone by, it was possible to define “the sanctuary” more precisely. For I have a grave concern that our present and modern liking for “accessibility” – to see, hear and be informed about absolutely everything has taken away a great deal of the awe and wonder about the need for “holy space”.

A little investigation into the origins of what was meant by “sanctuary” reveals that there may have always been a less than clear demarcation. In some contexts, the original Greek term meant the area of a place of worship that was reserved solely for the use of the clergy. In following a Jewish model, we could presume this to mean the Holy of Holies in the Temple at Jerusalem – rarely frequented by anyone and a place of mystery. The sanctuary of a Christian church was separated off by rails or a screen: and the Orthodox Church retains this demarcation with the iconostasis – the holy screen with doors, out from which the priest emerges from time to time to impart knowledge of what goes on behind – in the closer presence of the Most Holy. The priest acts as a mediator between the heavenly and the earthly realms.

But confusion begins to arise even from an early stage. The Latin word “sanctuarium” indeed means the same as what the early Christians intended, but it was extended to mean the whole area around the altar. The Council of Braga of 563 sets out instructions of who is forbidden to enter this “special” area of the church. So we are referring not just where the altar is housed, but the pavement and choir – the holy precinct where worship goes on. This is what we might refer to as the chancel: anything beyond the traditional choir screen.

My eye scanned further through the references – like reading Crockford’s clerical directory where one cannot but read the entries above and below the one that is being researched. So I read on about the use of “sanctuary” as the place of refuge from criminal prosecution. It has an interesting history, largely done away with at the Reformation. But I noted with intrigue that even after that time, that “sanctuary” could be sought – as it applied not just to escaping to a particular place inside the church, but a defined radius around a particular religious site and that the south side of Fleet Street was, I believe, the last remaining such place – within the monastery grounds of the White Friars – the Carmelites who had occupied that site. The report I was reading said that this area was called the “alsatia” and was the haunt of “debtors, swindlers and worse criminals”. Well, if this is all that is left of “sanctuary”, it did, of course, set me wondering if members of this Guild came into any of those categories, as you are people who “haunt” the sanctuary! But let us not pursue it here!

Suffice to say that looking at our investigations from another angle, rather than trying to pinpoint too precisely what area of the sanctuary might occupy, instead it is best to say that it focuses upon where the altar is. Or more precisely, if a church has more than one altar, where the main or “high” altar resides. For to define the sanctuary takes us to the very heart of our Christian beliefs – that what goes on at, on and around the altar gives visible expression to the Faith in which we believe – namely that Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection are brought to life there. Ours is no slaughter of an innocent victim to appease an angry God: but the sweet offering that makes true and real our belief that Christ died for our sins and his self-willing offering opens our way back to God, to be restored to the first innocence of his saving love given to us through Baptism. In some definitions of the word sanctuary, it can mean that area that is “raised up”. In the sanctuary, upon the altar, Christ is raised up and we too, through our connection with Him in our Holy Communion, we too are raised up and it heralds the availability of being taken up into glory. Hence the sanctuary itself becomes a prefiguring of the Kingdom – a glimpse of what awaits. Stretching the imagination when you see what goes on in some churches!

So my concern remains: which is why I share it with you today. In days gone by, when a majority of our churches were constructed, the sanctuary was a clearly defined space around which the rest of the place of worship was arranged. Perhaps visibility was not a paramount concern but to the faithful believer “seeing” what was going on was not a primary concern. Being in the presence of the “holy activity” was all that mattered – whether you understood the words, saw the action or could get close to it were of less importance.

But times have changed, liturgical patterns have changed, ecclesiastical fashion has changed (so I am told), language has changed. Least of all am I here to tell you that it was better in the “good old days”. But the concern I have is that now we have all but done away with “holy space”. With café church (as seen on Priest Idol on TV), or a couple actually getting married in Tescos (so they did literally walk down the aisles), we are fast losing any sense of the “holy”. You are committed to being servants of the “sanctuary” – but how do we retain that sense that there is part of our church that is “set apart”? You can’t be servants of it if there is no sanctuary, no place of sanctity! A lot of altars have lost any sense of them being a “holy table”. They may be devoid of lights or decoration. An altar was a place that was worthy of the Lord’s sacrifice – I do not always see that these days. But extending it to the area around the altar: as many of them are now sited at the crossing of the traditionally shaped cruciform shaped church – the sanctuary has become just that – a crossing, a thoroughfare, a place to mingle and chat – a market-place! In the traditional catholic ordering, there resided a tabernacle or aumbry where the Lord in his sacramental presence was housed. This usually (but not always) brought the faithful to some semblance of acknowledging the holiness of the place – by the lowering of voices and genuflecting when passing before it. It was/is a place of homage and adoration.

But, of course, free standing altars have done away with all that recognition of the holy presence. The Blessed Sacrament may be tucked away in a side chapel or, at least remote from the place of the main worship space. What has resulted, inevitably, is less reverence at the place that we shall use for the sacrifice of the Mass. I spoke of it being “raised up”. We all have images of altars arrived at by clambering up the array of steps that create pavements, steps for deacon and sub-deacon etc. The mystery created by altars lost in the mists of incense perched half-way up an east wall is totally lost when the coffee-table now resides on a rickety erection positioned in front of a choir screen, and where when the priest sits down behind it, he looks as if he is a decapitated S.John the Baptist whose head has just be brought in on a salver and placed upon the altar for veneration.

I exaggerate: but on purpose. There is a great danger that we are losing all sense of the holy. As members of a Guild devoted to loving service of the sanctuary, it is up to us to make the offering a worthy one. It is up to us to demonstrate to others that there is a holy space in this church, a place set apart for the pleading of the sacrifice and we must behave around and within that holy space with reverence and awe.

To digress for a moment by way of illustration. Increasingly I find that people don’t know how to behave at funerals. Their emotions go to pieces and all they want is Frank Sinatra singing “I did it my way” as the curtains close round the coffin. As the person conducting the funeral, I have to guide their thoughts in the right direction. In a sense, I have to “behave” properly for them. And even if I haven’t met them or the deceased beforehand, they will be relieved afterwards and thank me – as I have given expression for them of their feelings – a ritual, a liturgy – as they didn’t know how to. In just the same way – we, as servants of the sanctuary (and I include all priests in that), we have to show people the dignity, reverence, awe, holiness that truly belongs to being in that defined area of the Church.

People are genuinely searching for the holy. They have tried many secular attempts to bring “spiritual” feelings into their lives. I get a real impression that there is a quest for knowledge of religious experience, but the sense of the “holy” has been sufficiently lost so that it means people have lost sight of what they are searching for, and more importantly, where to find it. As I say, I have no wish to put the clock back and return to the heady days of the Victorian revival of all things catholic in church liturgy (fun though it was): but I do see what we have a duty and responsibility to show people that “holy space” does still exist and just as important, that it is accessible to them through catholic worship and spirituality. To give people a sense of their own relationship with God, a desire from God Himself that He wants us to “draw near with faith and receive”. It need not fill them with fear, but with awe and wonder – which are, I fear, the key elements that we have lost in our worship since Vatican II introduced its radical reforms. The Roman Church has now realised this: we have a duty to shoe them “how” – so the opportunity is with us to teach the catholic faith to Catholics!

Now more than ever (as many of our churches are expensive to retain and maintain) we have a major job on our hands to bring to people the importance in their lives of a sense of the “holy” – largely focussing upon the availability of holy space. We see now the use of secular space as a place to express secular holiness, or even an absence of holiness. This need to set up roadside shrines every time a fatal accident occurs. Or dare I mention the funeral of one George Best – celebrated in a castle, with the coffin placed across the bottom of a flight of steps. How far will this secularism go? Servants of the sanctuary – you have a major evangelistic task to perform – to bring to peoples’ attention the holiness of the space you serve: to draw people back to a true expression of their relationship with God: an accessible, loving and forgiving God who we meet each and every time we approach the altar to receive his life-giving Body and Blood. “Lord, I am not worthy….but speak the word only, and I shall be healed”. The sanctuary is a place of healing and wholeness. Treat it then as it should be treated, worship within it as God would have us worship Him. Behave within it as is right and proper – so that those who see us will respond too with – “Truly God is in this place and I did not know it”.

Herod, even, sought to do homage to the infant King. The wise men were brought to their knees when coming into the presence of the Most Holy. We too must show people how – as servants of the living God.

Fr. Timothy Bugby SSC
Superior-General of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament.

Epiphany 2006

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