Catholic Church interiors: Memory

by Rev. Gabriel Baltes, O.S.B.  |  08/04/2024  |  A Message from Our Pastor

Dear Parishioners,

Continuing to reflect on the significance of places of worship, (as we prepare to return to our parish place of worship, i.e., the church) I believe it is essential to recognize MEMORY as an indispensable component to such places. In his insightful and comprehensive study of worship environments, Fr. Richard Vosko, Ph.D., Hon. AIA, writes:

The building (i.e., church building) is understood as an extension and reflection of the people who gather there. It balances and gives life to both the traditions and the visions of the community. It is not a museum of relics that reveres only the past. It is not a mere container for ritual objects, gestures or even people. Instead, it is a resonator of the community. It energizes the assembly gathered to enact the narrative that sustains it. This narrative is a story that the faithful believe even though it cannot be fully understood or explained. It is a story about us. In the Christian tradition the paschal event is the story.

In the above few sentences, Fr. Vosko synthesizes our Catholic (and non-Catholic as well) understanding of sacred places which, historically we have consistently set apart for the worship of God. But they not only provide a location for people of faith to encounter God, they also enable these same people to repeatedly encounter their history – their memory. This explains why the remodeling of churches, or worse, the closing or destruction of churches, generates such a high level consternation or even hostility among the people who claim these buildings as their spiritual home. The memories of their past are permanently wedded to concrete objects and structures such as, altar furnishings, statues, images, windows and countless other visual and tangible artifacts that reinforce who they are as a community. When these “reservoirs” of memory are altered or removed, a people’s identity is threatened, their raison d’etre is called into question and their future may be rendered unnecessary.

During the eleven years that I worked in the Office of Worship for the Diocese of Superior, WI, it became necessary to close a number of parish churches either because the buildings themselves could no longer be maintained or because the number of parishioners had grown so few, the bishop could not justify assigning a priest to serve them. Keep in mind, some of these churches were in very rural towns that may have consisted of only a post office, gas station, bar and church. When suddenly, one of the four pillars that identified the town was taken away, the townspeople suffered an identity crisis. And it did not necessarily matter if everyone in the town was Catholic. The fact that a time-honored physical structure that they recognized and felt a part of in some way, was no longer in their world, meant their past was being eliminated and their future being prevented. And so it was not uncommon for the parishioners at these parishes to stage public protests, write letters (sometimes scathing) to the bishop and even leave the Catholic Church altogether and affiliate with another Christian denomination.

On an even more drastic and tragic scale we see the devastating loss in the lives of people whose places of worship are destroyed by catastrophes of nature, persecution or war. The photographs you see here are of an Orthodox church that was desecrated and reduced to rubble recently in Ukraine. The heart wrenching reality of losing their church at a time when they needed it most in order to offer them consolation and hope, must be indescribable.

To prepare for our return to worship in our parish church, might I suggest that we comb through our memories and recall the various ways that church buildings (here or elsewhere) have left indelible imprints on our bodies and on our souls. These are places where we were welcomed into the Christian community at baptism, where we experienced God’s mercy as we confessed our sins, where we were fed by the very Body of Christ, where many couples were joined in marriage and where our dead were commended to God for the last time. They are places of sadness and joy, places of commitment, places where we could acknowledge our brokenness and experience hope and new life. Most of all these churches are places where we, as a people loved by God, were able to deepen our love for one another as together we gathered to worship the One God whom we name Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and for ages unending.