11/27/2022 0 Comments Tablecurve 2d v5.01 crack![]() The dignity and beauty and majesty of the church building, therefore, points to the greatness of the divine activity that takes place within the building, indeed, acting by the Sacraments within the souls of the faithful who gather under its roof. So, it is here in the church building that we are reconciled to God, here that we are spiritually nourished on Christ’s Body and Blood, and here that human souls are reborn in the womb of the font, with the Church for their mother, and God for their Father. For we are not worthy that he, the Lord God, should come under our roof, and yet he desires to, he chooses to, and so he gives himself to us in the Sacraments. Indeed, salvation has come to us, to our house. As we hear the Lord declare in today’s Gospel to the sinner Zacchaeus, “Salvation has come to this house… for the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost”. This awesome truth – that God dwells in human souls through grace – underlies the theology of the church building as a sacred place, and indeed, the existence of the church building itself serves this fundamental Gospel truth. So, behold, you and I, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, have been fashioned by grace to become the dwelling of God among us. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them”. And so, 700 years later, on this day in 1923, this great church, the fourth Blackfriars of London, was consecrated by Cardinal Bourne to continue the Dominican mission of preaching for the salvation of souls in the capital city of this United Kingdom.Īs the Epistle today declares: “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. However, the Dominicans who first arrived in England 800 years ago in 1221 had built their first London Priory in Holborn in August 1223. Present at this historic event was the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Nicholas Wiseman, who had invited the Dominican friars back to London after the desolation wrought by the English Reformation after 1538. Already in 1863, twenty years before the church was opened, the foundation stone (which is still visible from the Rosary Garden) had been laid by the Master of the Dominican Order, Jandel. This church, reputedly the fifth largest in London, had cost £40,000 to build and it took those four decades for the Dominicans, relying on the help of countless benefactors, to completely pay for the building churches cannot be consecrated if they remain in debt, hence the interval between the opening and the consecration of this church. It was only on the 1st of August in 1923 that this Dominican priory church was consecrated, some forty years after it had been opened in 1883. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |