The True Tabernacle
April 4, 2025 - Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent
John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30
The Feast of Tabernacles was celebrated in autumn, after the completion of the entire harvest—not only the barley and wheat, which were gathered between April and June, but also the grape and olive harvests. It was a time of great rejoicing, marking the end of the agricultural year.
Also known as the Feast of Ingathering (Exodus 23:16; cf. 34:22), this celebration required people to live for a full week in temporary booths made of branches and leaves (Leviticus 23:40-43). Town-dwellers erected these shelters in courtyards or on their flat rooftops. This practice served as a powerful reminder of their ancestors’ journey through the wilderness—when they lived in tents on their way to the Promised Land.
The Feast of Tabernacles was one of the three major pilgrimage festivals of the Jewish year, alongside Passover and Pentecost. It was rich in eschatological significance, pointing to the ultimate hope of the righteous dwelling with God in the age to come. The liturgy of the feast included the daily praying of Psalms 113-118, abundant music and dancing, and special ceremonies involving water and light—symbols of God’s presence and salvation.
Interestingly, as Christians, we celebrate the first two major Jewish feasts in their fulfilled forms. Passover finds its completion in Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection, through which we have been liberated from slavery to sin. Pentecost is fulfilled in the descent of the Holy Spirit, who now dwells within us, writing God’s law on our hearts (cf. Jeremiah 31:33). But what about the Feast of Tabernacles?
Unlike the other two, this feast has not yet reached its ultimate fulfillment. Its hope—that of the righteous dwelling eternally with God in a new heaven and a new earth—remains a future reality. This is why the Church does not yet celebrate it as a fulfilled feast.
However, glimpses of its fulfillment can already be seen in Jesus Christ. In John 1:14, we read: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Greek word for dwelt can also be translated as tabernacled. Similarly, in John 2:19, Jesus declares: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.”
Thus, on the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus—the one who truly tabernacles among us—enters the temple, a physical tabernacle made of stone. Yet few, if any, at that moment grasp the profound mystery: He himself is the true Tabernacle, the dwelling place of God among His people.