Twenty Four Hour Light

When I go into a Catholic church building for the first time, I look for the "vigil light" that burns next to the tabernacle.  This is the way that I know where the tabernacle is.  Now we Catholics believe that is where Jesus Christ resides in the host inside the tabernacle.  We did not invent the vigil light idea.  Like many things, we learned it from our ancestors, the Jews.  Go into a synagogue.  You will see  permanent light there.  It is a reminder that God dwells in that space, a reminder of the divine presence.  There is more.  The vigil light does not say the presence is only in the synagogue.  The synagogue space and light is a reminder that the Holy dwells in the cosmos.  Some Catholics think that outside of the wafer, the body of Christ, there is only secular, sinful world.  Not so.  God is everywhere.  We took a lot of ideas from our Jewish ancestors.  We ought to be talking to them more often.  I suspect they could teach us a thing or two.  Jesus was a Jew.  I keep Jewish friends near me.  When you start thinking God is Catholic, you have just started a new church.  We have more than enough churches.