The Opening Prayer (Collect) for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) implores, “O God, who teach us that you abide in hearts that are just and true, grant that we may be so fashioned by your grace as to become a dwelling pleasing to you.” Let us examine that Prayer’s extraordinarily rich yet succinct content.

God’s relationship to man is not just external. It is not the subordination and obedience demanded by pagan gods, who were only bigger, not better than men. It is not even mere friendship, although Jesus calls us “friends” (Jn 15:15). It is something more permanent, more intimate: God “abide[s],” He indwells. That indwelling is why “our heart is restless until it rests in you” (St. Augustine, Confessions). Although human beings have free choice vis-à-vis God, those choices are not equal: man separated from God is existentially alienated. He understands neither God nor, ultimately, himself (as Pope St. John Paul II reminded us in Redemptor hominis, no. 10).

Human recognition of the need for God’s dwelling among men is apparent in the Bible. It is why the Israelites conveyed the Ark of the Covenant around Sinai and why David aspired to build a house for the Lord (II Sam 7:1-2), a sentiment echoed in the Psalms (132:1-5). It is why Israel reconstructed the Temple after the Exile and, despite Herod’s moral depravities, Jews of Jesus’ day marveled (Mk 13:1) at Herod’s extravagant reconstruction of the Temple. It gives you a sense of the contempt behind the jeers of the Jerusalem authorities at the crucified Christ for speaking of destroying and rebuilding the Temple (Mk 15: 29-30). It also makes you aware of what a psychological scar for Jews was the ultimate destruction of the Temple under the Romans.

But this human aspiration to build God a house has always been preceded and outmatched by God’s grace. While David aspires to build a Temple for the Ark of the Covenant in Jerusalem, God promises him the Davidic house will abide forever through the Messiah (II Sm 7: 11b-16), a theme repeated in Psalm 132 (vv. 11-14). That promise is fulfilled through the living Ark of the Covenant — Mary — who made it possible that “the Word became flesh and dwelled among us” (Jn 1:14). None of this is human work, because “if the Lord does not build the house, in vain do the builders labor” (Ps 127:1). It is the work of God’s grace that always precedes and stimulates any good human undertaking, which is why the Collect asks that we “may be so fashioned by your grace as to become a dwelling pleasing to you.”

Catholicism makes clear that right worship of God is not merely a ritual checklist, because God seeks worship “in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:24), i.e., in internal moral rectitude. Again, that worship is not just us worshipping God as separate and discrete beings, us “here” and God “there.” Indeed, it is an impossibility: “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord!’ except by the Holy Spirit” (I Cor 12:3). Worshipping God “in spirit and truth” is the result of God dwelling within us, making us through the merits of Christ’s Passion into “temples of the Holy Spirit” (I Cor 6:19). We saw how central to the Old Testament was the Temple as the place of God’s dwelling, and we Catholics speak of a church as “God’s house.” But the most important dwelling and tabernacle of God’s Real Presence is the Temple that is the human person. And that is why human persons devoid of God are like the temple ruins we see scattered around Greece and Rome: They are perhaps pretty to look at and hold nostalgic memories of better days but are otherwise empty, “whitened tombs” (Mt 23:27), as Jesus puts it.

But God never indwells by force. Grace does not cancel freedom. God knocks; He does not engage in breaking and entering. William Holman Hunt’s famous painting, “The Light of the World” (see here), building on Rev 3:20, promises that the one who opens the door will receive a guest who brings the nuptial banquet of the Eucharist, the fullest indwelling of God this side of the Beatific Vision. The New Jerusalem is the fulfillment promised: God’s dwelling among men (Rev 21:3).

The truth is, however, that one can leave the door locked. Hunt’s painting also reckons with that possibility. The door on which Christ knocks is overgrown, looking like it has not been opened in a long time. Polish poet Roman Brandstaetter captures the tragedy of such a choice in his short verse, “A Parable about the Homeland” (perhaps timely amidst current discussions about home and immigration):

A certain man, who was God’s homeland
Sentenced Him to exile.
Sadly lowering His head, God
Left without a Word.
But He always longed to return
To the man who was His homeland.

[Translated text of Brandstaetter copyright J. Grondelski)