Ecclesiastical ArchitectureAnd Lay Contemplation

The "Sacred Monster of Thomism," Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP (who, incidentally, was Karol Józef Wojtyła's--the future Pope John Paul II--doctoral supervisor at the Angelicum University in Rome), more than anything, ought to be remembered for this basic thesis, namely, that the contemplative life is the normal life of grace for every Christian.

Fr Garrigou-Lagrange is no innovator, nor is this thesis an innovation.  He is, rather, recovering something that had been lost since the seventeenth century when certain Jesuit spiritual directors began cutting off the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit from the 'life of virtue.'  Since the Seven Gifts are necessary for salvation, and since the gifts of Wisdom and Understanding are given for the perfection of the contemplative life, it follows that every Christian--both clergy and laity--are called to some measure of contemplation.

Last summer, just before the grueling Pentecost Pilgrimage from St-Suplice in Paris to Chartres Cathedral, my small troop of peregrinators spent almost a week at Vézelay Abbey, a ninth-century Romanesque-turned-Gothic church in the Burgundy region of France.  Its claim to fame is mainly threefold, the famous Great Tympanum above the main entrance (in the narthex rather than on the façade), the addition of a Gothic choir and apse to a Romanesque nave, and, most notably, the ninety capital sculptures in the side aisles and nave columns.

Two things are especially striking about these capital sculptures:  Though very, very creative in their depictions, the carved Biblical scenes contain nearly the whole gambit of salvation history--except the Gospel narratives.  But not only are there Biblical scenes, there are also scenes from Greco-Roman mythology co-opted by Christians in attempt to highlight the life of virtue that the morals of these stories are intended to show.

At this stage in the Church's history, the purpose of sacred art was more didactic than devotional.  There are no places to light candles near these capital sculptures.  As Prof Dr Fans van Liere reminds us, the "Bible of the poor" was not so much intended to depict the Biblical narrative as to remind the faithful that what was preached from the ambo can be reflected upon, savoured, and digested by a careful scrutiny of sacred art (cf "The Bible of the Poor?" in An Introduction to the Medieval Bible [New York, Cambridge University Press, 2014], 237-259).

But why the absence of Gospel scenes?  Simply, because the Gospel scene is presented in the liturgical action on the altar.  Not only do we hear the Gospel at every Mass, but it is at the Eucharistic celebration where we "proclaim the Lord's death until He comes" (1 Cor 11:26).  The faithful are thus invited to reflect on the Biblical truths depicted in the capital sculptures during the celebration of the liturgy and, in partaking of the Lord's Sacred Body and Precious Blood, receive further graces to live the Christian life encouraged by the lessons that these capital sculptures depict.

Gradually, sacred art became more complex, with detailed portal sculptures outside and stained-glass windows inside.  One would see, for example, a lintel statue depicting Christ between the doors at Sainte-Chapelle, with His right hand gestured in blessing and his left hand open and ready to strike (cf Lk 23:39-43), all the while standing on a lion and a basilisk (cf Ps 91:13), reminding the courtiers of King Louis IX the demands of righteousness.  Or, at Chartres Cathedral, the unusual juxtaposition of the parable of the Good Samaritan and the Hexameron invites pilgrims to think about how these two Biblical stories may inform each other, bearing in mind the Patristic axiom "The New Testament is hidden in the Old; the Old Testament is unveiled in the New."

Churches on the Italian peninsula retained their Romanesque layouts for the most part, but with increasing influence of Byzantine iconography in frescoes--and the Basilica di San Francesco d'Assisi is a good example of this.  Frescoes in the lower basilica show the life of Christ reflected in that of St Francis of Assisi, thus reminding pilgrims that the basic programme of discipleship is the imitatio Christi (1 Jn 2:6).  Even simple churches--and my absolute favourite is that of the Chiesa di Santo Stefano tucked away in a charming alley in the middle of Assisi--have frescoes of simple Biblical truths about the Incarnation (cf Jn 1:14) and how the Blessed Virgin's body helped to 'enflesh' the Eternal Word (Gal 4:4).  Or, closer to our own time, Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Familia whose interior evokes the sense of being in a thick forest reminds us of Eden that was lost, now sought again in the programme of salvation (Is 51:3). 

I won't get into the footprint and layout of Gothic churches, nor altar reredos, nor the open spaces under preaching pulpits intended to depict the Empty Tomb, and many ways that pre-modern churches made Biblical stories and doctrinal truths palpable to the ordinary believer.  The point, ultimately, is this: Mediaeval churchmen knew full well that the laity were capable of the contemplative life, and the thirteenth-century Paris theologians, culminating with St Thomas Aquinas, identified this proclivity towards contemplation as the Septenarian gifts of Wisdom and Understanding.  Ecclesiastical architecture and sacred art was geared towards encouraging, enabling, and engaging the laity's contemplative life.

(It is also interesting to note that "the Mediaevals" which moderns love to villify as being illiterate and ignorant had a better grasp of Christian doctrine in their art and architecture than most holders of an M.Div. degree.)

Recently, I looked at a 'yearbook' of parishes in a certain North American diocese and was dismayed to see a stark contrast between the 'contemplative-friendly' style of pre-modern churches and the artistic and doctrinal barrenness of post-1950s churches, most of which were renovated to turn houses of worship into austere auditoriums that resemble a Calvinist meetinghouse.  I have, also, had the unfortunate privilege of hearing fist-hand stories of priests hiring steamrollers to crush dismantled stained-glass windows, selling altar reredos, and pawning liturgical vessels.  

I'm saving those stories for a time when my listeners need a good squirm in their seats.

What are we to make of artistically barren churches?  Three things, at least, culminating with the third.  First, The style of churches since the 1950s and especially the 1960s betrays a profound Biblical and theological ignorance that serves precisely to inform such barrenness.  I dare to say that the unusual 'aesthetics' of contemporary sculpture works to distract viewers from the artists' spiritual vacuity.  Second, the aversion to beauty reflects a fear of that transcendence which is inimical to the narcissism of the modern "spiritual, but not religious" man which, in turn, flattens the heavenward orientation of the liturgy to a "community celebration."  Third and most importantly, it undercuts the laity's baptismal propensity for the contemplative life by depriving them of artistic points of meditation and reflection (which may also be a transference of the artists' incompetence in matters Christian).

I also wonder whether there is a residual Gnosticism at play in such artistically barren and Biblically bereft churches.

The supreme irony?  The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (rightly, I think) heralded an "Age of the Laity"; before the Council, a number of theologians (and I use that term loosely) thought that the "modern man" was too sophisticated for supernatural things.  Yet we have ended up with a clericalism that deprives the laity of contemplation-inducing sacred art and claimed them too dumb to understand deep Biblical truths--all in the name of Vatican II.  More than that, such clericalism esteems itself more enlightened than the gifts of Wisdom and Understanding that the Holy Spirit endows even the simplest Christians with.  (Think of St Joan of Arc's answer that left the Inquisitors speechless.)

(Another irony is that, in renovating for a barren church interior, or simply building an artistically bland church, held no conversation whatsoever with Cistercian architecture.)

As a result of thieving the laity of external opportunities for contemplation (to say nothing of how few opportunities they are given for Bible studies and adult catecheses), a vacuum in their spiritual lives has opened up such that they seek to fill it with lesser things like dubious Marian apparitions and "devotionalism."

But clerics and religious who are frustrated with the often-odd devotional lives of their parishioners might want to consider the insufficiency of the preaching and teaching that is offered, as well as the Real Absence in the very house of the Church where they gather to liturgize.