Source : the age
The principle of Gothic architecture, wrote 19th-century poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is infinity made imaginable.
There is something almost inexpressibly inspiring about a 1000-year-old cathedral which lifts us into something much bigger than ourselves, reminds us of our finitude and inspires us to look beyond our daily lives.
Europe has many buildings of ancient lineage that are beautiful and grand, with every proportion designed to impress and delight – historic palaces or opera houses, for example. But only places of worship explicitly connect us to the numinous.
Cologne Cathedral grants us access to the infinite, prefigured by the 632 years it took to build. Credit: Getty Images
Cathedrals, soaring upwards, are designed to point worshippers to God, to the eternal, through their airy space, majestic proportions and wonderful decorations. I love entering a historic Gothic cathedral (or small stone church) and knowing that I am standing, sitting or kneeling where untold thousands have done the same, worshipping the same God, and doubtless praying very similar prayers for themselves, their families and their communities.
I love that I stand in this vast continuity, connected with the past and the future.
I love the faith and commitment of the master architects and masons who often laboured for decades, knowing the work would never be finished in their lifetime. Cologne Cathedral, the longest, took 632 years to complete.
People sometimes look at the ambitious size and scope of churches, even in small towns and villages, and wonder why their communities went to such lengths. One of the reasons was that centuries ago most parishioners could not dream of personal riches but, together, the community could – and did – take pride and pleasure in the result.
Of course, it is not only believers who seek a connection with what they hold sacred. Many find it in God’s magnificent creation, which leads them to reflect on how small a mark our lives make on the universe, or in man-made achievements such as music or art. I, too, am moved by all of these.
Perhaps the world’s most famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, has written that he is a cultural Christian in this way, that he loves the visible cultural expression of faith – the architecture, the music – while conceding nothing of its inspiration.
Even sceptics, I think, are impressed by the spiritual sanctity of these marvellous buildings. In their hushed environs no one shouts or runs or talks loudly on a mobile phone. They, too, are awed and stilled by the hint of the infinite.
Augustine, the great African theologian who wrote 1600 years ago – the one who as a young convert famously prayed “Lord make me chaste, but not yet!” – perhaps put it better than anyone when he observed that “our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in you”.
Barney Zwartz is a senior fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity
