Nave
The congregation gathers in the nave for Mass and other prayer. The arrangement supports seeing, hearing, and participating together.
Key points
- The assembled people express the Church as one body.
- Look for: The main space facing the sanctuary.
- An illustrative Roman Catholic parish in the Latin rite, assembled for study rather than surveyed from a single building. Plans, devotional furnishings, music, and the locations of the font and tabernacle vary; Eastern Catholic churches have other traditions. Sizes, materials, and spacing are illustrative, and displayed vessels represent different moments of worship.
- An assembly before a standardized building (Historical connection): Paul greets the assembly in Prisca and Aquila's house. His instructions to Corinth emphasize intelligible, edifying, orderly participation rather than a prescribed floor plan. Ephesians describes believers themselves as God's household and a temple built together in the Spirit.
- A house assembly is not evidence that every early gathering used an ordinary dining room, or that later dedicated churches were forbidden. The spiritual-temple language of Ephesians is not a construction specification.
- A council regulates posture, not a floor plan (Historical connection): Canon 20 asks that prayer on the Lord's Day and during the Pentecost season be offered standing. The nave is a place for bodily participation, not just an auditorium. The canon also reveals differing practice: it begins by acknowledging people who kneel on those days.
- A rule intended to establish uniformity does not prove that uniformity already existed. The canon does not show that every ancient church lacked seats, nor does it settle the later liturgical rules of every Christian tradition.
Scripture
- Romans 16:3-5 — An assembly before a standardized building: Paul greets the assembly in Prisca and Aquila's house. His instructions to Corinth emphasize intelligible, edifying, orderly participation rather than a prescribed floor plan. Ephesians describes believers themselves as God's household and a temple built together in the Spirit.
- 1 Corinthians 14:26-40 — An assembly before a standardized building: Paul greets the assembly in Prisca and Aquila's house. His instructions to Corinth emphasize intelligible, edifying, orderly participation rather than a prescribed floor plan. Ephesians describes believers themselves as God's household and a temple built together in the Spirit.
- Ephesians 2:19-22 — An assembly before a standardized building: Paul greets the assembly in Prisca and Aquila's house. His instructions to Corinth emphasize intelligible, edifying, orderly participation rather than a prescribed floor plan. Ephesians describes believers themselves as God's household and a temple built together in the Spirit.