Christ the King
Lots of new writing this week; Jill Kent, Chair of the Justice and Peace Commission on Fratelli Tutti, Rory Lamb on architecture and worship and Eileen Grant on The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin.
Christ Pantocrator from St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai.
This Sunday, Christ the King Sunday marks the end of the liturgical calender. Next Sunday will be the First Sunday of Advent, and the First Sunday of a new year in the Church.
It's natural, around this time of year, to lool back. To take stock of our successes and failures, to look at where we are in life and judge ourselves if we are not where we imagined we'd be.
At least, that is the trap I often fall into. But this year.. this year I decided to try something different.
Instead of looking back to see what I've accomplished, I'm looking back to see what God has done for me.
I doubt I'm alone in feeling this year has been especially hard. And yet, in the midst of all this... I've had enough to eat. A warm, dry place to sleep. A cat to keep me company. A priest who took time to speak with me on the phone, who even heard my confession a few times during the lockdown when I was desperate for the Sacrament. Family close enough to visit once restrictions were lifted.
In volunteering to help with opening the parish for parishioners, I've been learning the names that go with the faces I've known for a few years now. It's been a joy to see everyone back, to rejoice with each person returning as deeply as I rejoiced to return myself.
In my experience of helping to clean and sanitize the parish space after Masses, God has given me a whole new way to pray and to feel close to Him - there is something about mopping the floor in front of the tabernacle in silence that I just can't get over the beauty of.
Even in the midst of this pandemic, even through the very struggles this pandemic has caused, God has been here for me in so many ways. If I look for His presence, I can see it etched into every day of this past year.
So with a new year around the corner, I hope I can encourage you to reflect. How has God been present to you this past year? What has HE been doing in your life lately? And, how do you want to thank Him for His gifts in this new year up ahead?
Elena Feick | Paisley
The Presentation of the Virgin: Eileen Grant writes about an important feast for the Benedictines and one for Catholics who can take Mary as our role model in faith.
Fratelli Tutti: Jill Kent, Chair of the Justice and Peace Commission reflects on the latest encyclical from Pope Francis - Fratelli Tutti.
Scottish Architecture and Worship
By Rory Lamb
Scotland’s stock of church architecture has much to be celebrated by Catholics. Its noble medieval remains are complemented by a host of later buildings from modest Highland chapels to the grand Jesuit baroque of St Aloysius’ in Glasgow [Figure 1]. We might look wistfully at haunting ruins like Melrose Abbey or St Andrews Cathedral – sure proof that medieval Scotland was capable of the architectural splendour seen across Christian Europe – and reflect on the notions of beauty which motivated medieval builders. However, we can also see clearly from the reuse or destruction of medieval heritage by the Protestant Reformers that they understood there to be a strong connection between the church architecture and Catholic liturgy. Their fervent efforts in whitewashing and iconoclasm have not fully obliterated the vestiges of the Catholic past from the many reused medieval buildings seen across the country like Dornoch Cathedral or the charming parish churches of the East Neuk of Fife. In revealing something of their original liturgical function, these buildings remain closely linked to our present churches built since Catholic Emancipation in 1829, above all in pointing to the celebration of the Mass.
St Aloysius, Glagow, Figure 1
When we speak about Catholic liturgical architecture, how do we understand this connection between architecture and worship? Our churches are not simply static shelter from the elements in which to hear the Word of God, as a Presbyterian might understand them, but rather something more dynamic. Our architecture is full of deep symbolism which is worth learning about to enhance one’s liturgical participation. Divisions of columns and chapels throughout a church, for example, can point us to the many mansions in the Lord’s house, the dappled light of stained-glass windows to the unfolding of God’s revelation in the scriptural stories they depict culminating in Christ as Light of the World. To frame an understanding of liturgical architecture we might take up Fr Louis Bouyer’s reading of church buildings as “transitory tabernacles on the way of our pilgrimage towards the heavenly temple”.[1] From Fr Bouyer’s summary I would suggest we can tease out three ideas to consider about church buildings, namely that they prefigure the New Jerusalem; temporally act as receptacles of God on earth; and assist in our pilgrimage of faith.
Last week we celebrated the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica (Nov 9th), unusual in being the only Catholic feast-day celebrated worldwide which focuses not on a person, but a building. The liturgy of this Mass reflects that used for the dedication any church building. Although not always observed, each of our parishes can similarly observe an optional memorial for the dedication of its own church, as well as one for the cathedral of its diocese. Reading through the Mass texts for the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica is a firm reminder that our church buildings should not simply be brick-and-mortar backdrops to Christian worship but should play an important liturgical role, helping us to engage more fully in the rites we celebrate within them. A central image in this feast-day’s liturgy is that of the church community as the ‘living stones’ of God’s temple and the Communion Antiphon directly paraphrases 1 Peter 2:5 ‘be built up like living stones into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood’. Such architectural metaphors in scripture, of which there are several, teach us about the building up of the Christian community on earth. However, when we turn to the Preface of the Mass, we also read ‘Year by year you sanctify the Church, the Bride of Christ, foreshadowed in visible buildings’, suggesting that the Church also uses the scriptural imagery to inform a Catholic understanding of architecture itself. Here, then, it is employed symbolically, with the church building (ecclesia) serving as a sign for the community of Christ’s Church (Ecclesia) throughout the ages, specifically the Church Triumphant in heaven.
This is a perspective on Catholic architecture with great longevity, voiced by Guillaume Durandus in the thirteenth century as the great Gothic cathedrals of Christendom were rising around him:
…the material church, wherein the people assemble to set forth God’s holy praise, symboliseth that Holy Church, which is built in heaven of living stones. And as without cement the stones cannot cohere, so neither can men be built up in the heavenly Jerusalem, without charity which the Holy Ghost worketh in them.[2]
The physical building thus has a richly liturgical character, for it signifies those partaking in the heavenly liturgy which is prefigured for us on earth in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass itself. This has ramifications for how church buildings are ornamented. If the structure prefigures the Church of the Heavenly Jerusalem, it should provide an architectural setting which points to that heavenly reality and so help us engage in the Mass. Central to forming this appearance are the descriptions of the heavenly city found in the Book Revelation of its order and symmetry, walls of precious stones, gates of pearl, and golden streets, where the saints are constantly illumined by the light of God. This is why we employ stained glass, sculpture, rich building materials and fabrics to ornament our churches, so that the offerings of our community help to build up an image of heaven.
The primary reason, it seems to me, that such an exalted architectural ambition might be applicable to a rural parish church in Aberdeenshire as much as to Chartres Cathedral is their shared dignity in housing the Eucharist. The presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament at the Mass offers us that vertical link between heavenly and earthly liturgies. Verticality in gothic architecture (in pointed arches and spires) is usually understood as medieval man’s striving towards the divine, but really this upwards emphasis reminds Catholics that we already have Him here with us and that the church building is the setting of a drama which daily unites heaven and earth at the altar.Calling attention to the Eucharistic faith of the Church, Pope Saint John Paul II wrote in 2003:
…the faith of the Church in the mystery of the Eucharist has found historical expression not only in the demand for an interior disposition of devotion, but also in outward forms meant to evoke and emphasize the grandeur of the event being celebrated.[3]
He continues that ‘the designs of altars and tabernacles… [were] motivated by artistic inspiration but also by a clear understanding of the mystery’. Practically, this is then borne out in architecture to the extent which a parish community can afford. The whole building can become a tabernacle, a jewelled lantern, witnessing to the locations where God resides on earth. Something of this is seen in charming casket-like buildings like the medieval church in St Monan’s, Fife, or St Mary and St Finnan’s on Loch Shiel [Figure 2]. What we find more commonly, however, is the articulation of the sacred specifically in the sanctuary of our churches. The reservation of the finest materials and ornament to the altar and its surroundings gives a clear direction to the liturgical space, leading the worshippers to
Figure 2: E W Pugin, St Mary and St Finnan’s Church, Glenfinnan (1873).
Figure 3: William Robertson, St Mary’s Church, Inverness (1837), detail of the reredos by P P Pugin (1894).
a focus of visual importance. This is seen effectively in the traditional use, even on a small scale, of a reredos (an ornamented screen behind the altar) as at St Mary’s in Inverness [Figure 3] or a baldachin (a pillared canopy above a freestanding altar) as at St Mary’s in Fort William.
Look in almost any Catholic church and you will see architectural signifiers of the transition between the nave and the sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, on the subtlest level taking the form of a heightened decorative scheme. To my mind, one of the best examples in Scotland is in the Arts and Crafts style church of St James in St Andrews, designed in 1910 by the Catholic architect Reginald Fairlie [Figure 4]. Here, Fairlie makes architecturally present the division within sacred space by contrasting a plain white-washed nave with a rich, marble-clad sanctuary elevated by steps and with an internal dome and external spire marking the position of the altar. Most striking of all, an inscription is cleverly positioned around the dome so that “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus” are the only words visible from the congregational nave. Sadly, in many Scottish churches (as further afield), the clear connection between architecture, liturgy and the Eucharistic belief of the Church has been eroded in the last fifty years by ‘wreckovations’ of the liturgical furnishings (look up, for example, the changes to the sanctuary of St Andrew and St Cuthbert in Kirkcudbright).
This brings us to the final point to be drawn from Bouyer’s summary – that the church building can assist us on our earthly pilgrimage. What I mean here is we can find instruction in the truths of the Catholic faith by taking in the liturgical art and architecture around us. In reference to the Eucharist, John Paul II desired that “sacred art must be outstanding for its ability to express adequately the mystery grasped in the fullness of the Church's faith”.[4] In other words the artistic or architectural arrangement should express the teaching of the Church with clarity and thereby help confirm our inward reverence towards the Eucharist. Elsewhere, more symbolic meanings, such as that of the ‘living stones’ discussed above, are there to be sought and reward us with a nuanced understanding of why our buildings appear as they do; I am intrigued by the notion that a priest could actually illustrate his preaching by explaining such symbolism present in the building around him. But this can also take a more didactic form in the decoration of walls and windows with scriptural narratives and the examples of the lives of holy men and women from which we can learn. There is a particularly attractive link here in the use of church windows to depict the lives of local saints, or those special to the community. To return to Fairlie’s church in St Andrews, the south nave windows depict St Magnus, St Andrew and St Margaret, while the nave is overlooked in the organ gallery by the principal dedicatee, St James. Such artwork tells their stories through symbolic attributes and scenes from their lives, and their light is a sign of the radiance of Christ shining through his saints. Moreover, images of Scottish saints in our churches not only remind to us strive for their virtue, but also as figures with local associations they help to make present in a geographically specific way the saints of God already present at the heavenly liturgy.
Figure 4: Reginald Fairlie, St James’ Church, St Andrews (1910).
We can perhaps bring the three ideas discussed loosely together under the three transcendentals of beauty, truth and goodness. The church building encapsulates the beauty of the heavenly city, it focuses this on the truth of Christ’s Real Presence, and in artwork it teaches us clearly with examples of goodness from scripture and the saints. The richness of church architecture should not be a superficial distraction at Mass but a beautiful means of drawing us in to the mysteries of our Faith. So do have a look.
[1] P.L. Bouyer Liturgy and Architecture (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), 6. [2] G. Durandus, The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1893), 17. [3] John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia (17 April 2003), paragraph 49. [4] John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia (2003), 50.
Rory Lamb is a PhD student in architectural history at the University of Edinburgh researching the Scottish community of London. He leads the campus chapter of the Thomistic Institute at the University and sings as a chorister at St Mary’s Metropolitan Cathedral. He has joined the Coracle team and will become a regular fixture.
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