The Wilderness Tabernacle and the Word Who Dwelt Among Us
Old Testament: Exodus 25:8
And they shall make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell in the midst of them.
New Testament: John 1:14; John 7:37-38
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. ... And on the last, and great day of the festivity, Jesus stood and cried, saying: If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
The connection
God commands a tent to be built so that He might have somewhere to dwell among a people He has just rescued: "they shall make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell in the midst of them" (Exodus 25:8). The tabernacle was never the point; being in the midst of them was. Every later temple, and every year's Feast of Tabernacles recalling the wilderness booths, kept that same promise in view: God does not merely visit; He pitches His tent among His people. John names the Incarnation in exactly this vocabulary. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14) uses a Greek verb, eskenosen, built on the word for "tent": the Word tabernacled among us. And John places Christ's own great self-revelation squarely inside the feast that carries the name: on the last and greatest day of Tabernacles itself, Christ stands and cries out, "If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink" (John 7:37-38), claiming for Himself the very feast that had always pointed to His arrival.
Moral sense
The feast came once a year; the dwelling it commemorated was meant to be constant. The soul is asked for more than an annual pilgrimage of attention: to let Christ actually pitch His tent within, a continual dwelling rather than a yearly visit remembered and then set aside.
Anagogical sense
What Exodus began and John announced reaches its final form in the New Jerusalem: "Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them" (Apocalypse 21:3), no longer a tent that can be struck, a feast that ends after eight days, or a body that could be crucified, but a dwelling with no temple required at all, "for the Lord God Almighty is the temple thereof, and the Lamb" (Apocalypse 21:22).
Warrant
On the Catechism reference, which was audited and changed: CCC 1379 was a mistake made on the English word: it is about the tabernacle as the place where the Eucharist is reserved, not the wilderness tent as a figure of the Word dwelling in flesh. 1179 is the right paragraph, on the Body of the risen Christ as the spiritual temple "from which the source of living water springs forth", which answers this entry's second New Testament reference at John 7:37-38.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1179.
