By Mary Kay Oosdyke, OP, PhD

    Today when we gather to worship, we do so in a variety of settings. The traditional cruciform (cross-shaped) church has given way to round, square, or other-shaped structures. The interiors of these newer churches vary in an attempt to express the special character of the local community’s faith. During the last 30 years, even the more traditional churches have undergone some interior changes. Pews are turned so that the people seated in them face one another. Tabernacles are located in alcoves or chapels. Kneelers are becoming more rare, and flexible seating is replacing the firmly fixed pew. The most recently constructed churches often include modern sculpture, baptismal pools, large atriums, and even coat rooms!

    Our responses to these changes range from profound understanding and appreciation to confusion, a sense of loss and anger. It is clear that the changes have raised questions, sparked dissension, and in general challenged our understanding of the Church and its worship. What is not always quite so clear is that the real issues of our faith are not about kneelers or stations of the cross, but about things far more fundamental, such as the nature of revelation, incamation, and salvation. In other words, where does the saving God choose to meet us? In what ways does God speak to us? How and where does God save us?

    The answers to these questions hinge on our understanding of liturgical space and on our contemplation of the architecture and art forms which create it. This article takes one step toward that prayerful contemplation of liturgical space. It begins by addressing the need to understand the nature and purpose of art and architecture, if our worship experience is to be all that it can be. It focuses on five topics:

These topics help us to see how art and architecture make a valuable contribution to Christian life, to worship, and to spiritual development. Ultimately, art and architecture invite us to contemplate the very presence and activity of God in our world.

    We often think that art belongs to some imagined elite who frequent symphony halls and art galleries. Yet the truth is that art belongs to everyone. It is commonly experienced in every life and is part of being and becoming human. Just look at the refrigerator doors of families with school-aged children. Art abounds! When we are young, we draw pictures of ourselves, our dreams, and our world. As adults we continue to sketch our dreams and make our blueprints. We also tell stories, participate in song and dance, and sometimes enter a world created by images, such as those of film or advertising.

    We are all involved with art on a regular basis. We live and work in more or less artfully designed buildings which express who we are and what we are about. For example, our school buildings tell us something about what society thinks it means to be a student or a teacher, about what it means to teach or to learn. Many of us also collect artifacts for their beauty or interest. We sometimes commune with the spiritual realm through images such as statues and paintings. Art, then, is all around us, telling us who we are and challenging our understanding of that reality. As human persons, we use and enjoy art daily.

    Art also invites us to enter and explore life’s deeper meanings (Wilson Yates, "Journal Notes: Reflections on Art and Spirituality," Arts, Winter 1991, p. 22). The notion of invitation is a key to understanding art. Art is not coercive, but it does have a real evocative power. That is why it can make us feel uncomfortable or threatened. In art, the human person comes face to face with an invitation. The invitation is often subtle, evoking memory, feeling, and rich associations which are alive deep within our inner world—sometimes beyond our consciousness or control. Art invites us to engage that inner reality (Yates, p. 22). And, like humans everywhere, there are some invitations we accept eagerly and some we seek to avoid. We sometimes seek to save ourselves from an uncomfortable encounter, the work of engagement, or even the decision of accepting or rejecting the invitation itself. For example, Michelangelo’s Pieta presents a mother and son relationship, in suffering and death. We can open ourselves to that image and its meaning for us or we can look away because we find its meaning too painful to contemplate.

    Just what is art? One of the better definitions states that it is "the quality, production or expression of what is beautiful, appealing or of more than ordinary significance" (The American College Dictionary, New York: Random House, 1963). Essentially, art is something humans make, which by its nature demands to be experienced aesthetically. Aesthetic experience involves insight, a kind of communion, a simple and whole abandonment of the self to the object of our perception; it can happen with or without effort, in a split second or only gradually (Duane Prebel, Artforms, San Francisco: Canfield Press, 1978, p. 41). The artistic object remains there for us, waiting to be experienced in its entirety. The artistic object is made for contemplation. The Vietnam Memorial and the Mona Lisa each in its own way invites a contemplation born of experiencing its wholeness.

    When we encounter a piece of art, we face at least two things:

Its material form results from the combination of its perceivable characteristics; for example, the shape, color, position of the wall, the number and placement of names on the Vietnam Memorial are elements of its form. Its content, the memory of the thousands who died in a controversial war in Vietnam, is the "cause of’ the external form.

    The relationship of form and content is important for understanding art, contemplation, and aesthetic experience;fonn and content exist in a rich interplay of revelation. Content determines the form, and form expresses the content. In the case of the Vietnam Memorial, the interplay is seen in a black wall which cuts a gash in the earth and whose shiny surface reflects our own face superimposed over the names of the dead.

    All perceivable forms have some content and all content must have some form. Artists utilize form (line, shape, color, light, texture, mass, time, space, motion) to express content. The content itself may be of a spiritual, emotional or experiential nature, but it is the form that we perceive. The content of a black and white photo of an emaciated child is more than the child itself; it is the hunger and the need of the child. Thus, the content is what we experience the form to mean (Prebel, p. 41).

    An important principle for us to remember in this study is that changing theform changes the content. For example, a rose is considered to be a special gift. If there are a dozen roses, the gift is interpreted to be very special. If there is one rose, lovely and fresh, it usually means a thoughtful expression of affection. If, however, the rose or roses are wilted, if they are dead or black, the interpretation is quite different. It is the form (perceivable characteristics such as number, color, appearance) that changes the content (Prebel, p. 41). What this tells us is that the form is of the utmost importance to meaning.

    Much of the contemporary experience of lack of meaning is due to the failure to engage reality on its deeper levels. Too frequently, we say someone or something is "boring!" Often at these times we simply do not perceive’ the fullness of the situation, and we lack the readiness to contemplate and transcend the limits of our immediate experience. Thomas Moore, in his recent best seller, Care of the Soul, writes that art "in its broadest sense, is that which invites us into contemplation" (New York: Harper Collins, 1992, p. 286).

    Art and religion share a long and interrelated history. From pictures on cave walls to Greek epics, from the Hebrew literature of Exodus to the Negro Spiritual, the divine-human encounter is expressed in the various forms of art. Yet in spite of this long relationship, there is a certain tension between art and religion. One perceptive writer has said that art and religion "seem like lovers courting across an abyss, while each claims to desire the other, both resist the leap across the void" (Pat Malarcher, "Art and Liturgical Environment: An Artist’s Perspective," New Theology Review, February 1993, p. 18).

    Periodically there have been efforts to absorb art into religion or religion into art, but neither have succeeded in totally absorbing the other. Each retains its own integrity while sharing several important features:

Art and religion also share the dubious honor of being viewed with some fear. Neither is considered safe, for both promise to take us beyond the familiar. Both abstract art and charismatic prayer can take people beyond the familiar and safe. It is often within the contexts of art and religion that human beings grapple with questions of meaning, or as Paul Tillich puts it, with their "Ultimate Concern." New meanings may call for change, growth

or conversion. For some people this is too threatening.

    Early in the history of Christianity we find evidence of some Christian ambivalence toward the arts. We know Tertullian asked artists to abandon their art if they wished to become Christian. Image-making was associated with pagan religions and unknown powers. Another clear example of the fear of the artistic image is seen when the Council of Elvira in Spain (309) insisted that there be no pictures in the churches lest the people worship what was painted on the walls. On the other hand, there are far more instances throughout the history of Christianity which support the arts. Eusebius, a Church historian, wrote that "the evidence of our eyes makes instruction through the ears unnecessary" (Margaret Miles, Image as Insight, Boston: Beacon Press, 1985, p. 49). In his mind, image could reveal the holy.

    Religion and art have a lasting relationship marked by a creative tension. They cannot be completely separated nor can one totally absorb the other. In religious circles, any human tendency to possess the holy directly is doomed to failure. The holy always comes to us as a mediated presence using material reality, its presence and absence, and art form. We must simply acknowledge that God has chosen to come to us on our own terms. It is through recognizing the importance of the ordinary in life that we are touched by the holy. As Belden Lane writes, the holy is to be found in the "corporal experience of one’s physical environment" (Landscapes of the Sacred, New York: Paulist Press, 1988).

    While art forms can never contain or confine the infinite loving Mystery we call God, they can help us to encounter that reality by providing a pathway to transcendence. Hans Urs von Balthesar, a Swiss theologian, emphasizes the link between art and religion while respecting the integrity of both. In his aesthetic theology, he suggests that it is the concept of "glory" that links the aesthetic to the transcendent and art to the holy. Art like theology and philosophy is a form of revelation; it leads people to light through the contemplation of beauty. Human beings are made for glory—to glorify God and to enjoy God forever n glory. Enjoying God is the essence of contemplation.

    It is a truism to say that we recognize everything, but see nothing. Seeing has long been recognized as a gift. In ‘ancient times, those who had the gift were called "seers." Today we don’t think about seeing beyond the obvious very much. We say that what we see is what we get. We simply don’t realize

at humans need to learn to see. This as aptly illustrated in a story about a five-year-old boy from New York amed Joey. Joey was born with cereal palsy to parents who were blind. cause of the combined disabilities parents and child, Joey’s activities ere confined to an apartment. linical tests indicated that Joey was lind and mentally retarded. However, his mother insisted that he had normal intelligence. Joey was admitted to a hool for children with disabilities. e behaved as a person without sight, casionally bumping into things and onstantly feeling for objects. owever, it was not long before the taff realized that Joey was not blind; e simply had never leamed to use his yes. With the aid of specialists and uent contact with sighted children, his vision progressed to normal ebel, p. 9). This story indicates the degree to which seeing is a learned behavior.

    Seeing is more like discovery than it is like photography. Art serves that perennial human need to see beyond the limits of form, to discover reality. Art manages to create in us new ways of seeing everyday life. Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig does this remarkably well in his simple line drawing of a human holding a smoking pan by its handle. He writes simple prose that is born of "seeing" about the gift of a handle—and we see it for the first time. We give thanks for the invention of the handle. Without it there would be many things we couldn’t hold on to. As for things we can’t hold on to anyway, let us gracefully accept their ungraspable nature ‘(Michael Leunig, The Prayer Tree, Australia: Collins/Dove, 1991, n.p.).

    Leunig treats the common handle like an icon. Ordinary objects of daily living, when seen in terms of their iconography, become objects which have significance and dignity. Their symbolic potential is heightened and we become aware. David Morgan says it well when he writes that art is "the public recognition of the wonder of seeing what we are adept at ignoring" ("Is There an Artist in the Church: The Contribution of Reinhold Marxhausen," Christian Century, March 20-27, 1991, p. 327).

    Another aspect of seeing concerns premature judgments and self-centered standards. When I look at reality, I tend to label and classify it, to make immediate judgments about it, and to appraise its value based on its overall usefulness to me. In contrast when I "see something, I become "all eyes," entering deeply into the reality before me, forgetting myself in the process (Frederick Frank "The Eye Is the Lens of the Heart," Breakthrough, Vol.11, No. 204, Winter/Summer 1990). A three-year-old child squatting in the middle of a busy sidewalk totally absorbed by the journey of a single ant is a typical example of this.

    There is an ancient Sufi text that contrasts "eyes of flesh" with "eyes of fire." The first focus on the world in all the richness of its materiality, perceiving accurately its many facets and their inter-relationships. The second see each object’s participation in a larger meaning. Things are seen, as "local signs of a distant power." Roger Lipsey introduces "eyes for art," a phrase inspired by Thomas Morton, which he says takes in both ways of seeing, for both contribute to vision (Lipsey, An Art of Our Own, Boston: Shambala Press, 1989, p. 17). The challenge of art is to make the unseen visible and to heighten the awareness of relationship through an aesthetic experience. In the aesthetic moment, the viewer is one with the work of art and is completely captivated by a single awareness. When that contemplative moment passes and everyday consciousness returns, the viewer has a sense of having encountered a creative, uplifting, and illuminating mystery. Art brings us this "visionary way of knowing" that is able to see "the divine in the human, the infinite in the finite, the spintual in the material (Bernard Berenson, Aesthetics and History, Glasgow:Pantheon, 1953, p. 80, quoted in Jane Dillenberger’s Image and Spirit in Sacred and Secular Art, New York: Crossroad, 1990, p. 2).

    The prophet Isaiah reminds us that "Without vision they will perish." It is vision that artists bring in their work with art forms. Since we cannot see God except as "masked in the ordinary," it is the artist, both the common craftsman and the master of fine art, who draws out the implications of the holy in a powerful way for all to see (Susi Gablik, "What Is Art For?" Breakthrough, Winter/Summer 1990, p. 21).

    If art forms invite us to contemplation and enable us to glimpse the Ultimate Mystery that surrounds us, then art is, in some sense, revelatory. We have already seen that human beings are dependent upon art forms for knowing. It shouldn’t seem strange, then, that our spirituality is also dependent upon the forms of art. If we but recall our own spiritual life, we will see clearly how the arts have had an ongoing role in shaping our spirituality from our birth to the present. Stories and hymns, images, body movement, and community actions have all influenced our own spiritual journey. Each generation of Christians has its symbol or story or song. From Marian hymns and traveling statues to living room liturgies and service projects—these hymns, images, and actions of a faith community have helped to shape the spirituality of a people.

    One artist reflecting on the nature of art said, "What is art? A word made flesh" (Eric Gill cited in Prebel, p. 10). Although this may not have been intended as a specifically Christian reference, the analogy is obvious. For Christians it is "the Word made flesh" that provides the paradigm for all our meetings with God...because of Christ all ordinary things assume new importance. They are masks of the holy, not sterile occasions for rationality inferring the existence and attributes of God; but vivid, if broken, means by which God as Mother of Creation comes to us (Philip Watson cited in Lane, p. 39).

    It is, therefore, in the humanity of the Christ that we find a foundation principle of Catholic spirituality— sacramentality. By sacramentality we mean that all of created reality has the potential to reveal the saving presence of God, to provide a place for humanity to meet God. Catholic spintuality is firmly rooted in this sense of the sacramentality of the material world. In a faith rooted in God’s presence in Jesus the Christ, Christians continue to encounter their saving God within the symbols of ordinary living—bread and wine, water and oil, fire and wind, word and gesture. The God who meets them there is the same God who meets them in wood and stone, in oil color and water color, in clay and steel.

    One interesting example of the way art and spirituality come together can be seen in Reinhold Marxhausen’s work with a Lutheran youth group in South Dakota. Marxhausen, an art professor at Concordia College, gathered a huge mound of crumpled newspapers. After reflecting on the transitory nature of news, he asked the group to crawl beneath the pile, lie there and think about all the people whose stories were on top of them. They were instructed to focus on a news story in front of them, to think, to pray, to ask if there was anything they could do about it. Then he had them imagine that every event that ever was printed in newspapers the world over was on top of them. He reminded them that Christ suffered, died, and cares for all of these people. He bears their burdens. Marxhausen’s event was a kind of parable using a common, everyday element to jar one to spiritual insight and decision about one’s relationship to others. He constructed a mound of newspapers and invited people to enter it in order to see the scope of Christ’s ministry today. In Marxhausen’s eyes, Jesus was an artist who used image and metaphor to invite his followers into the reign of God. Art continues to do the same today (Morgan, p. 326).

    While showing some friends a recently renovated liturgical space, one turned to me and said, "It doesn’t look like a church." She was right. It wasn’t a church. It was a space waiting to become church when the assembly gathered. Clement of Alexandria understood this long ago when he said that "a temple is not a building but a gathering of the faithful." The American bishops reiterate this truth in their statement Environment and Art in Catholic Worship (#178). From the early Church to the present, the primary symbol of Christianity is always the assembly itself gathered in the name of Christ. For an assembly is not a casual act; it is intentional. People assemble for a purpose; Christians assemble to be church. Assembling always has a dangerous side. It is a community’s prophetic act. When people assemble, something is going to happen and what happens is not always predictable. Just think of the meetings we go to expecting to address one thing and end up doing something quite different. An awareness of the assembly, then, is of key importance as we begin this discussion of architecture. Mark Boyer puts it succinctly, "Theology begins with a people and designs a building around them" (The Liturgical Environment, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1990, p. 24).

    Buildings are at once familiar and mysterious. They perform a most significant task. Buildings take a piece of space and turn it into a meaningful place. While space can span the distance between noses or between galaxies, place implies an enviromnent of meaning, a grounding in relationship, a space limited by context, such as a home or school. As human beings, our entire existence is shaped by place. We all exist in a place. We come from a place. From there we move to new places. And all of these places contribute to shaping who we are and what we do. It is in and through the places of our lives that we come to our identity and determine our actions. Place is what gives us our existential toehold in reality, for it provides us with both a standpoint and a meeting place. The simple phrase "I’m here" carries a lot of meaning.

    Architecture has been defined as "the concretization of existential space"; it expresses through form and content how and where human beings

live (Christian Norburg-Shultz, Meaning in Western Architecture, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1924, p. 432). Architecture, drawing on art and science, carves into space a sculptured structure designed to shelter human activity. It organizes space both for practical behaviors and for symbolic activities (Prebel, p. 188). The architectural structure is composed of a whole system of symbols which creates a meaningful environment for human persons. There are entrance ways and walls, passageways and windows, light and dark spaces, open and closed spaces, all are designed to express the meaning of the whole space. Therefore, while architecture is concerned with everyday needs and activities, it is also concerned about meaning within the human environment (Norberg-Shultz, p. 433).

    Despite the impressive spires and domes against the skylines of countless towns and cities, the focus of architecture for Christian worship is always on the interior space. The primary intention which governs the building itself is providing a place where the Church can gather to celebrate its faith. It is not a matter of building a monument to God or to anyone else. As the American bishops clearly said in their statement on the environment of worship: "The norm for designing liturgical space is the assembly and its liturgies" (#42).

    Christian worship space derives its meaning and shape from liturgical activity. Any architect who designs liturgical space must attend seriously to the nature of liturgy and its many diverse activities, for liturgical space is of vital importance to the life of the Christian community. It determines the possibilities and limits of what the assembly can do liturgically and therefore of what the assembly can become.

    Similarly, Christians must, as Gilbert Ostdiek suggests in his insightful book, Catechesis for Liturgy: A Program for Parish Involvement (Washington, DC: The Pastoral Press, 1986), attend intentionally to the surrounding architectural structure, accepting its invitation to meaning and to full engagement in the mystery of Christian worship. The nature of the liturgical act is that of a public ritual prayer. When the assembly gathers to celebrate liturgy, it is giving expression to its deepest identity in Christ. There the saving encounter of humanity with its God occurs. There the reign of God becomes more realized as symbolic actions cross boundaries and heal relationships, as word is proclaimed, as bread is shared and as mission is renewed by God’s deep bless ing. The ritual that shapes this experience involves a variety of actions on the part of the community. These actions, in turn, give shape to the ritual space.

    The liturgy is a rich combination of sensory experiences and physical activity. All of the senses are involved—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. The community engages in assembling and greeting, singing and processing, reading and listening, preaching and responding, ritual gesture and silent contemplation, public acclamation and dismissal. The scope of these activities calls for diverse space needs. According to most assessments, the design of liturgical space needs to provide for a gathering space, a movement space, a congregational space, a central celebration and preaching space, a baptismal space and a choir space.

    Movement space is one of our concerns today. People are invited to participate fully and actively in a liturgy filled with movement and physical gestures, yet they are confined to pews which allow participants only the most minimal movement. Prior to the 14th century, liturgical space was mobile space. There was no fixed seating, because the liturgy itself was filled with movement from doorway to assembly, from pulpit to altar, from table to the world. In the late Middle Ages the people sat down. The congregation gradually became sedentary and isolated in private space. The challenge, today, is to return to the understanding of movement space as worship space. Movement must not be seen as distraction but as a vital expression of worship—the gathering, the sign of peace, a procession, eating—these are of the essence of Christian worship. These are, in the well-known words of Romano Guardini, the "contemplative action" of a community.

    In addition to movement space, there appears to be a need for what is being called "transition space." The need arises out of a pace of living that does not allow time for changing place. From the solitary space of a car to the communal space of liturgy is often a matter of a one minute dash from door to door. Some architects are responding to that need for transition by constructing space that serves a purpose similar to speed bumps in parking lots. They slow us down and call our attention to the space we are entering. Architects do so by aesthetic surprise—putting walls with a long narrow window where a door would be and constructing quiet passageways that change our direction and lead us gently into sacred space.

    In each of these instances, the structure speaks to us of who we are and what we are about. We need to attend to its reality, to see it for what it is. We need to dwell in the liturgical environment, whatever it is, listening to it and entering its reality. Only then will we know how it helps or hinders our prayer as a community.

    The American bishops in their statement Environment and Art in Catholic Worship give two criteria for the art forms of liturgical space. They say the nature of liturgy demands that the art and environment of liturgical space be marked by 1) quality and 2) appropriateness. Quality can only be determined through contemplation of the art form; more pragmatic judgments will not give an accurate sense of quality. Quality is reflected in the care with which the object is made, in the integrity of the materials used, in the honesty and hannony of its expression, in the invitation it offers by its symbolic nature (#20). For example, a gold chalice is not automatically more fitting than a clay vessel. Artistry, the integrity of the material, and symbolism are the more important considerations.

    The appropriateness of the art form is determined in two ways. First, the art form must be capable of "bearing the weight of mystery, awe, reverence, and wonder which the liturgical action expresses." Secondly, the art must serve the ritual action of the community at prayer; it must not distract, interrupt, or radically change the focus of the assembly (#21).

    These criteria remind us that art in liturgical space is not about adorning a space with beautiful objects to be admired. In fact, beauty is not mentioned at all. Rather, the task of art in liturgy is to create penetrating moments of communal vision "in which the fear of seeing anew is cast out by a greater trust in discovering what is present in our midst." Ultimately, art must lead us to relationship with one another and all creation, and reveal in our lived experience the movement of the divine spint that loves and saves us (Morgan, p.

328).

    Architecture and the art forms within the liturgical environment are powerful players in the drama of liturgical activity for good or for ill. The power of their symbols speak to us even when we do not attend to them fully. When we ignore them, we lose some of the potential of our rich ritual prayer. When we engage them fully, when we contemplate them, we can encounter Mystery, celebrate it well and be transformed.