New Altar at Rievaulx Abbey

Yesterday saw the unveiling and dedication of the newly built-up altar at Rievaulx Abbey. The building of the new altar was initiated by a member of All Saints’, Helmsley: Chris Bryant, now sadly deceased.

Last night, hundreds of people gathered as the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Whitby, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Middlesbrough, the Prior of Ampleforth, and the Chair of the Methodist District of York and Hull dedicated the newly built up high altar, and the Archbishop of York celebrated the Eucharist for the first time at this altar. There are more pictures from the day here, and below is the text of the sermon from the Bishop of Whitby, the Rt Revd Paul Ferguson.

The altar is built from a sandstone base with the original altar stone, and the stone is left deliberately simple and unadorned to show a distinction between original and new stonework. The altar was made by Historic Property Restoration and Skillington Workshop, Conservators, based on the designs of the existing altars in the side aisles of the nave at Rievaulx.

The key to a better understanding, I’d suggest, is that whilst we acknowledge today the vision and generosity of Chris, and all the other supporters and donors, we think less of what we are doing, and more of what it is we can be witnessing to as this altar is re-erected.

We are surely witnessing to, and honouring, the best of the Cistercian way of being friends and disciples of Jesus. More than anything else, that is centred on prayer and space devoted to a relationship with God: prayer in the daily offices sung in choir, prayer in the community’s constant celebration of the eucharist, prayer in private contemplation, prayer undergirding Cistercian scholarship of which Aelred’s writings are such a shining example. But the Cistercians also transformed the sometimes wild physical landscape, and their influence on medieval land management, agriculture and industry was enormous. They enhanced the lives of many people over a wide area. So one of the things that we witness to, through this act of worship today, is the Cistercians’ example of seeing spiritual work and physical work, seeking to influence for good both the spiritual environment and the physical environment, as complementing each other and indeed being part of the same vocation. Without some appreciation of that mix, that wonderful union of faithful obedience and faithful creativity, it seems to me, we miss the point of Rievaulx.

And we must be witnesses to the faith of monastic communities in times of hardship, whether occurring naturally or through the actions of others, culminating here in the dissolution of 1538 — a period that has left an ambivalent legacy that we still feel five centuries on.

All that is in the scenery of this evening’s gathering. But again, if that were to be all of which we were aware, we would not be getting to the real truth. And that is because we are not here fundamentally because of what we or even the monks have done. We are here — as at every act of worship — because of what God has done, is doing and we trust will do. It is the table of the Lord that has been physically reconstructed so that a greater story can be told and a deeper truth can be witnessed to: it is at this table that we tell the story of our salvation, we say our Amen to Christ’s promise that where two or three are gathered he is among us, we do this in remembrance of him so that sins may be forgiven, we proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes, we recognise the risen Christ in the breaking of the bread. Yes, we bring our sorrow that we cannot all yet fully share in one visible communion: but look, we bring the fact that that sorrow touches us all. And there could be no better day to have this celebration than today, Corpus Christi, the feast when together we devote our thanks and praise to the reality of Christ’s sacramental presence for ever with his people: living, active, inspiring, empowering; sign and guarantee of God’s love for the world, a love that we are called to reflect and for which we are called to be advocates, however challenging that might be, and however much it might ask us to strive for that mix of obedience, creativity and resilience in a host of situations both public and private where Christians, rooted in prayer, can be doing the work of God.

I started with some thoughts about the leaden questions that (as John reports) people asked Jesus, and how his replies enter a different dimension, expressing those great statements about himself. If today’s gospel reading had gone a little further, we would have heard a question and answer the other way round. The words that Jesus uses about himself as spiritual food are too strong for some of his listeners and they give up following him. John writes: ‘So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”’ At that point of crisis in the gospel, Peter, earnest fallible Peter, recognises that without Jesus there is a void that nothing and no-one else can fill. We, in our turn, would have nothing, and be nothing, without Christ who gives himself to be our spiritual food and drink. So we honour Chris’s memory, and have the best of all reasons for being here now, when we are clearest there is no pretence here of living in the past, no play-acting in ‘bare ruined choirs’, but a conviction that the living Christ is with us to the end of time, that in the Lord the labour of prayer is not in vain, and that the joy of God’s good news can transform the landscape of human life. Through that same Christ, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour is yours, for ever and ever.