St Clares :  How to read the church                                     


Return to How to read the church

Tabernacle

Standing behind the altar there is a decorated box, known as a tabernacle. The function of the church tabernacle is to store the bread for the ceremony of the Eucharist. The bread is regarded as the body of Jesus. 

It is Roman Catholic belief that the wheaten bread and grape wine are in objective reality, not merely symbolically, converted into Christ's body and blood, a conversion referred to as transubstantiation , so that the whole Christ, body and blood, soul and divinity, is truly, really, and substantially contained in the sacrament of the Eucharist