A sacramental building??? huh???

An other article. This one written by our wise and humble pastor. :) My favorite article on the subject thus far. I never thought about the church building being sacramental! Mind blown! :)

Church Architecture
By FR. James Jackson, FSSP.

From the earliest days, the Church has been zealous for the building in which God is worshipped, and the reason is intimately connected with the liturgy. For we need eyes to see God as both the Fountain of beauty in this life and the Fountain of holiness in the next.

Unfortunately, cultivating such vision is difficult in our times, when most of what our world is producing is surpassingly uninspiring and even ugly, and this banality has extended even to Church architecture. In contrast to this modern tendency, we have Beseleel and Ooliab, the architects of the first tabernacle, who were "filled with the spirit of God in wisdom, and in understanding, and n knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver and in brass, and in cutting of stones to set them, and in carving of timber." (ex. 31:3-5) When the first tabernacle was built, there was no effort to pander to the whims of the architect's profession or of a church committee!

Sacramentality is the feature that distinguishes traditional ecclesiastical architecture from the modernist architecture of our times. By the outward and visible form is signified something inward and spiritual. Mere reality is not sufficient, for what can be more real than a pyramid - and less Christian? In a parallel universe, many would desire that the words of our Lord to be plain, unadorned and simple. But the words of Christ were in fact parabolic, figurative, descriptive, and allegorical; just so the church building ought to imitate her Master.

Church architecture should thus itself be sacramental, a material fabric which figures the purpose for which it was designed. The distinction between a contemporary church (which might look like a mall or some prop from Star Wars) and the traditional church is not found simply in an association of ideas, correctness of detail, mechanical construction, or in quaintness, but in sacramentality. Remember the definition of a sacrament from the catechism: "A sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give santifying grace." So the church building should be sacramental, an outward sign of what is really happening inside it, and above all what should be happening in the soul.