Woodchip Gazette -- Arts & Leisure: November 2010

Years ago, on a student excursion, I was walking down one of Barcelona's tree-lined avenues, flanked by Housmann-esque residences when all of a sudden one of the buildings seemed to have melted before me.

"Oh!" said my Russian Jewish English teacher,"you must see Gaudí's basilica, to the Sagrada Familia."

I had seen more than enough of cathedrals, but "there's nothing like it anywhere" impelled me forward.

And, standing there, eyes wide and mouth agape, there was nothing like it anywhere.

The spires looked like towering, elongated ears of corn, a green Christmas tree with white doves stood over the main entrance, the roots of trees turned into gothic arches, mis-shapen cornices turned out to be faces -- everything grew out of, blurred into, melted away from, and spiraled upwards from everything else.

In what would become the leviathan space of the interior cave-like vaultings rose into the open air.

Although the church is dedicated to the Holy Family, it struck me more as a monument to God's Creation. Not depicted on many easily available photographs are the lizards, fish and animals the creep out of strange places along the exterior facades. It is a mistake to think of the cathederal as "futuristic" -- it is rather medievalism gone prophetically space age. It was hard to believe that this stunning vision dates from 1882 -- the height of the Beaux Arts epoch.

Alas.... it did not seem to me that it would ever get finished. Franco's catholicism was not interested in such an embarrassment and Spain was poor. Construction on the cathedral had been at a virtual standstill since the Civil War and large parts of the structure were roofless and exposed to the elements. "Such a pity" I thought as my mind tried to imagine what the completed marvel would look like if effort ever replaced neglect.

This Sunday, Pope Benedict dedicated the substantially completed (still abuilding) edifice. As with any project a century in the making, there have been revisions to original scheme, but now we know.

ARRIVAL & GREETING BY KING & QUEEN

ENTRANCE PROCESSIONAL

In dedicating the church, Benedict remembered its creator, Antoni Gaudí who "who kept the torch of his faith alight to the end of his life" and noted wryly that he had never wavered in the conviction that St Joseph "would finish this church".

Gaudí's work, he said, was proof that "beauty is one of mankind’s greatest needs; it is the root from which the branches of our peace and the fruits of our hope come forth."

The edifice manifested Gaudí's desire to bring together the "three books" which inspired him as a man and as an architect: "the book of nature, the book of sacred Scripture and the book of the liturgy." In this way "he made stones, trees and human life part of the church so that all creation might come together in praise of God" At the same time he faced the church with sacred images that revealed to the world outside the beauty of God's sacrifice for Man.

In this sense, "Beauty also reveals God because, like him, a work of beauty is pure gratuity; it calls us to freedom and draws us away from selfishness."