Last Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the Church of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Antoni Gaudi, the famous Spanish architect who designed the Church has thought of a new concept of what we understand by a temple. Considering the fact that Gaudi envisioned this temple over a hundred years ago, and the relevant meaning of his idea, makes him really prophetic.

All the Churches we know of, and in which we were brought up, were built in a Christian society and culture. We considered the Church as the temple of God, the place were Christians meet regularly to encounter God. Everything in the Church speaks of God and helps one to think, listen, and experience God. From the inside, the Churches we know are museums of sacred art: icons, paintings, sculptures and holy images of all sorts. All the environment was religious, we did not need much to help us think of God. So, from the outside, the Churches barely carry any religious sign. Some of them have a particular architectural form; but in old cities you would find important buildings, like the town’s hall, having almost the same structure.

Gaudi reversed this concept of the Church. He thought of the Church as that sacred space where man and nature encounters God. However, he also thought of the Church as a sacred space for man living in the world to think of God and of His presence in the daily life. Therefore, while the inside is austere of any sacred images, but full of natural symbols with all the columns and branches coming out of them to hold the ceiling; the external four facades are full of statues representing scenes from the Life of Christ, from Scriptures and the life of Saints, in a way as to give the impression that they are forming and holding together the walls of the Church and the whole temple. Gaudi envisioned man approaching the Temple of God with all his humanity, carrying with him into the temple all of nature. At the same time, he foreseen man living a life of alienation in a world that has sought to eliminate God, but in which God’s presence can still be seen and felt.

Pope Benedict said that something similar was thought by God when He created man. God wanted to be in permanent communion with man. Therefore, He chose to abide into the deepest place of his heart, carrying with Him His divinity; making man the real and living temple of God. St Paul said: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holyy Spirit?” Yet from the outside, God did not clothe man with His divinity, He rather clothed Him with humanity, so that looking at him He cannot but remember of man!

This is the unique mystery proclaimed by Christianity. The dignity of each and every human being has reached perfection in Christ Jesus. In His humanity, which turns the believers crazy and scandalizes the non-believers, is the Son of God, just like in a temple. Whoever fails to respect man and despises his dignity, is alienated from the real value of man. Whoever lacks the courage to go through the fraility, weekness, and poverty of the human nature, finds it difficult to make a true and authentic experience God.