VATICAN - Planning and building God’s house. Contribution by Bishop Mauro Piacenza, President of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church. “A place of worship”

Vatican City (Fides Service) - The following article is the first in a series on the building of a Christian place of worship, a church,, which may be of help particularly in mission territories.
Cardinal Leo Scheffczyk, with regard to Vatican II, noted that “attributed with a sacramental structure and defined as a sacrament which transmits as a sacrament and in a sacramental manner the ‘personal sacrament’ Jesus Christ, the Church was liberated from a purely worldly and naturalistic understanding in the horizontal and ‘here and now’ sense’” (L. Sceffczyk, La Chiesa, Milan 1998, p. 38).
It is evident that this sacramental reality of the Church has immediate practical implications at the level of sign also regarding the actual building of a place of worship. The shape, interior arrangement and furniture must all express the theological and religious sense of a domus ecclesiae.
A Christian church starting from the outside is a sign of a community of believers in Christ and as such it is in itself presence, proclamation, testimony of the Kingdom of God here among us. Extending what Jesus said with regard to his disciples and the community of Christians, the place of worship must be like “town set on a hillside’ which cannot remain hidden (cfr Mt 5, 14 and parallel).
Through the centuries church buildings, generally well integrated in urban fabric, have been monumental - like the Gothic cathedrals or Baroque churches - or more modest but nevertheless easily recognisable. The manner in which the Church presented her places of worship often went hand in hand with the idea she had of herself and wished to communicate to others. There was a period, fortunately brief, in which a mistaken concept of poverty or a need to be hidden, for ideological reasons, produced churches similar to the most banal civil construction totally lacking in visibility.
Today in the light of the authentic ecclesiology of Vatican II, we can think about churches distinct from homes for decor and dignity, although not luxurious; built using the best of human art and ingenuity not for ostentation but out of love for God; discreet but non anonymous. They should be easily recognisable as Catholic places of worship, and built in such a way as to offer, by their mere presence, a joyous proclamation of the Gospel, particularly in our urban contexts now marked by religious plurality. Hence the necessity of the traditional bell tower which acts as a sign, for the eye and for the ear.
The church usually has “liminal” zones which articulate the passage from the outside to inside: front steps, facade, portal and atrium. They meet the faithful’s need for a space which distances from daily reality before entering the holy place, corresponding to the Sunday rest, which marks every week. These architectonic elements, far from causing a fracture, on the contrary connect the outside with the inside of the church where we celebrate the Liturgy of the Mass the “source and summit” of everyday life. Whereas for the believer they signify unity of faith and life, for those who do not believe or are searching, these elements should appear as a friendly invitation to enter. Not by chance churches often open onto the streets or the principal squares of the town or city.
Moreover careful choice of the iconographic programme for the facade, portal and church doors help these external architectonic elements integrate into the liturgical dynamics and paths of the sacraments of what is termed ‘Christian Initiation’ (baptism and confirmation), processions liturgical (Sunday Mass entrance procession, Palm Sunday and so forth) or devotional (Corpus Christi or patron saint’s feast days). Other external elements can be clear spiritual messages such as the sanctuary placed at the top of a flight of steps as a sign of a penitential or ascetic ‘going up’ to the Lord.
Even the orientation of the church building, with the apse facing the east and the rising sun, who is Christ (cf Lk 1, 78), helps faithful remember “always contemplate Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” (Heb 12, 2), not only during Mass or in prayers but every moment of the day and night. Mauro Piacenza, President of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church and President of Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology . (Agenzia Fides 7/3/2006 - Righe 53, parole 703)