A Reflection of Creation in Community
When I first hear the word church, my mind does not go immediately to the towering, almost frigidly beautiful gothic cathedrals or the extravagant churches decked in glorious artwork depicting the Holy Family and the Communion of saints. Instead, I think of the church that I have called home for almost as long as I can remember, Our Lady of the Angels in Arizona — fondly called the Casa by all those who love it. In Theology in Stone, Richard Kieckhefer writes, “Entering a church is a metaphor for entering into a spiritual process: one of procession and return, or of proclamation and response, or of gathering in community and returning to the world outside” (21). The church’s very name indicates that the spiritual process of gathering in community is its emphasis.
The church itself is built in a circular fashion. The pews surround the unadorned altar in a semi-circle, matched by the ceiling design where long, thin panels radiate out from a center circle above the altar. The colors of the church are subdued: a rich brown wood for parts of the walls and the pews, a section of varying desert colored stones behind the altar, carvings depicting the life of Christ in the light brown rock in the back of the church, and the remaining areas startlingly white. It is as though it has simply been raised out of the Arizona desert landscape around it. In the midst of this simplicity, though, are astonishingly beautiful stained glass windows based on St. Francis’ Canticle of Creation. St. Francis’ words describe the marvelous nature of God’s creation and begin with the following lines:
O Most High, all-powerful, good Lord God
to you belong praise, glory,
honour and all blessing.
Be praised, my Lord, for all your creation
The Canticle of Creation is a celebration of the wonder of God and His creation, and this celebration is mimicked in the design of the church itself. In Kieckhefer’s work, he writes about how the communal church typically has no focal point. The design of the church does not draw the eye to the altar or emphasize the spoken word as in sacramental and evangelical churches, but rather one must see the whole church when one looks. If there is a focal point, it becomes the people gathered, the community itself. In other words, the focus of the church is God’s most wonderful creation. As the stained glass windows on the wall sing praises to Brother Sun and Sister Earth, the gathered community as the focal point joyfully embodies life through song and speech directed towards God.
Often, I find myself unable to put to words exactly the feeling that this church evokes in me when I step inside to worship with the community, but, once again, Kieckhefer has the words: “The basic values expressed by such architecture are integrity, hospitality, and beauty: an integrity that shuns artificial materials, a hospitality that makes people feel welcomed as if into a family, a beauty that impresses on them ‘that the ineffable, transcendent, awesome, fascinating mystery of the divine is immanently present’” (54). The structure of the building transcends the physical nature of it, symbolizing this connection with God and the community. Everything about the building of the church is deliberate in the means to help the community to worship and feel that connection with God more apparently. Denis McNamara calls decoration the “poetic expression of structure,” meaning that the stained glass windows ultimately represent those three essential components of integrity, hospitality, and beauty, although they do so in a manner more evidently playful than the bones of the church itself. As we have seen throughout many instances in the course of the class, the stained glass becomes the connection between the visible and the invisible, the material and the immaterial.
Reflecting on what I have considered my spiritual home anew, I find myself noticing the impact of the architecture of the church on the community rather than any particular design of the building. I had never before considered how much the architecture of a building could impact the way that a community worships, but every interaction that I have had and witnessed within the Casa is one of a welcoming family. From the joined hands during the Our Father where people step across aisles to join hands in a single unified prayer in front of Christ to the joyous, enthusiastic lifting of voices at the conclusion of the mass, each moment reflects the communal nature of the church’s structure. During the lecture, Professor O’Malley discussed the “symbolic resonance of the Church,” saying that it is the “union of past, present, and future; the ideal and realized liturgy; the living and the dead; the universal and the particular.” Within the communal gathering at the church during mass, I am able to witness this ability to transcend towards God in the union of all ages, the direction of the liturgy, the celebration of life and resurrection after death, and the evidence of individual creation that points me towards the glorious nature of all of creation.
