When you sit down with the rest of the congregation for Mass, did you know that you are sitting in the vision of the New Earth, the restored Garden of Eden? That is what the Nave, the place for the laity’s participation in the liturgy, represents. In the beginning, the Garden was the place of communion between God and Man; this was lost through the sin of our first parents, and the events of salvation history have been a gradual restoration of that communion. “The Temple was a shadowy architectural sign of a restored relationship between humanity and God, and the present-day church building is meant to be exactly that as well, though now shown in its fullness as image of heavenly realities” (Denis McNamara, Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy, 48). In the Temple, as in a Catholic Church, the Holy of Holies (Sanctuary) represents Heaven, and is connected to a second space (the Holy Place or Nave) which represents the New Earth, the place where God and Man will meet in perfect communion at the end of time. The difference between our churches and the Temple is, of course, Christ. The sacrifice offered in our churches is the perfect sacrifice of Christ, and we enter into true communion (though still hidden under signs) with God through His gift of the Eucharist.In a church, the sanctuary and the nave communicate: the sanctuary enlightens and guides the nave, which becomes its visible expression. Such a relationship restores the normal order of the universe, which has been destroyed by the fall of man. Thus it reestablishes what had been in paradise and what will be in the kingdom of God.”
St. Maximus the Confessor