It often seems to me that some of the most significant conversations happen almost by chance. Though as St John Paul II once remarked: “In the designs of Providence, there are no mere coincidences.” So it was that as I began to pray and reflect about our celebration of the Dedication of our Abbey Church in this Jubilee Year my mind recalled an unplanned conversation at a gathering years ago in South Africa at which Archbishop Desmond Tutu was present. He was asked about his experience of chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the downfall of the apartheid government, and he began to share about one of the many days of deep distress.
He said that on one occasion he almost collapsed and had to stop the proceedings when he heard the unexpected testimony of a white policeman. This officer along with others had killed a Black student, Simphiwe, then burned his body on a bonfire, while the officer and his colleagues roasted their lunch. Tutu said: “I was completely shocked about how low we had descended in our disregard for human life. We had come so low that someone would be burning the body of another human being while he himself roasted his lunch by the side at the same time.”
What might this have to do with the celebration of the dedication of our abbey church? To understand this and to see the significant link with the Jubilee we need to go all the way back to Genesis. What did God do in the Garden of Eden? What was the point of this garden? God blessed Adam and Eve with the gift of a unique and intimate relationship. He graced them with being bearers of His image and likeness. We are therefore offered a familial relationship, a royal freedom. Eden was no ordinary garden it was God’s original temple and Adam was the priest who came at the end of the procession of creation. It was his vocation to lead the whole of creation in worship and praise of God. This is why the culmination of the story is not the creation of human beings it is the ‘sabbath’. The great Polish American Rabbi Abraham Heshel wrote:
“Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath … one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.” It was on the seventh day that God gave the world a soul, and “[the world’s] survival depends upon the holiness of the seventh day.”
The Sabbath comes on the seventh day, a day to experience rest and communion with God. It did not take long sadly for God’s plan of family, fullness and freedom to be rejected by our first parents and so a new covenant was needed after the fall and we see the gradual development of the liturgical pattern of Ireal built upon the number seven, the cycle of sabbaths and sabbath years culminating in the sabbath of sabbaths, the year of rest where Israel would be restored and her sins forgiven, that is the Jubilee. Listen to Leviticus 25:
“You shall count seven weeks[c] of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years. 9 Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement, you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. 10 And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.”
When the ‘rams-horn’ or a yobel in Hebrew -from which we get the word Jubilee – when this was sounded the time of liberation, forgiveness, restoration is announced. The Temple itself was constructed in such a way that it symbolised the Jubilee. It was the place of encounter with God’s mercy and healing and so here is the context of the passage from the prophet Ezekiel that we heard as our first reading. Ezekiel had a vision, a vision of a new and perfect temple. This temple was to be built on multiples of fifty and the entire complex measured five hundred cubits on each side which represents ten Jubilees and ten for the Jews was a perfect number. So, five hundred cubits was a perfect set of Jubilee cycles. Put simply the temple was a concrete Jubilee. Hence from this place of sacrifice the river of life would flow, rejuvenating the land and bringing healing. Here is the promise of a new Eden. The promise that the glory of the Lord would fill the temple.
With the Messiah’s arrival God’s covenant took a very decisive step. So, it is in the letter to the Hebrews we are told that the temple is not a building that we have come to. It is not a concrete symbol of God’s Jubilee, but the temple is Jesus himself. As Zacchaeus found in today’s Gospel to encounter Jesus is to encounter the Jubilee of God made flesh. Salvation had come to Zacchaeus’ house. When you and I enter this Abbey Church, we enter God’s time and space, we encounter not merely the desire of God to liberate us and restore us to His original design – we encounter God the Holy Trinity themselves.
But healing and liberation cannot happen unless it is built on truth. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was instigated post-apartheid in South Africa was built upon a sound Jubilee principle. Only by acknowledging and confessing can we build a new relationship, sustain our relationship as sons and daughters of God. This Abbey Church testifies to the fact that transparency of life is the ultimate goal of right praise of God. Our encounter with God springs from and leads to a restoration of our filial relationship bestowed in Eden. We bear God’s image and likeness. We are His living temple. The Abbey Church reminds us of the profound relationship that we are called to enjoy. A relationship of praise. A relationship of freedom and liberation. But a relationship that is based on truth and reconciliation.
This is not simply a building in which we say prayers. This is the place of encounter where we are formed and transformed into living temples of His glory.
Abbot Robert Igo, OSB
Ampleforth Abbey
6 September 2025
