The tabernacle
The essential thing is the content
The tabernacle is only a container, important is what is kept inside this holiest of holies. For practising Catholics, the bread symbolises that Jesus Christ is present at the Eucharist. Believers experience the presence of Jesus Christ through the bread. He speaks to the people: «Take this bread and eat it, for this is my body. I will come to you. I am with you. I am in you.»
At the end of the Eucharist, the transformed bread is kept in the tabernacle as strength for the sick and dying. But also for people who come to the church to pray outside the church service. They are aware that Jesus Christ is present in the form of the bread. In the middle of my everyday life I can pause and ask: What do I hunger for? What fills me up? Where would I like God in the form of the bread to transform me?
«Tabernacle» is derived from the Latin word «tabernaculum» meaning «tent» and is probably attributable to the ark of the covenant of the tabernacle in which the Tablets of the Law, the holiest of holies of the Jews, were kept. In Judaism, this tradition of the Ark of the Covenant as a remembrance has been preserved to the present day with the Torah shrine, which contains the most holy possession of the respective community: the Torah scroll.