La Sagrada Familia

"Yeah, I was surprised you didn't have Spain on your list to start out with!"
"Yes, but you haven't seen Catalan Gothic!"
"You mean you were in Barcelona and you didn't make seeing La Sagrada Familia a priority?"

Inevitably, someone is going to ask me what I'm doing in Europe and we'll talk about different churches and if they know anything about anything about church architecture, they'll have a reaction like the ones I've heard and reproduced above. Most people were amazed that I hadn't done extensive study on La Sagrada Familia. I just shrugged my shoulders and said that it hadn't come up.

Then I went to visit it and wondered the same thing they did: How did I not know about this?

The answer, of course, is pretty simple. I thought I really had all of this under control and had focused myself on older ceremonial churches, as they'd be the places I'd be the least familiar with. We don't exactly have examples of centuries old cathedrals back home. At least none like this. But we also don't have La Sagrada Familia back home either.

Now, it's not finished yet, so don't get nervous about it or upset about the scaffolding. It's been in production since around 1884, or at least this stage has been, since it's the product of Antoni Gaudi's forty years of work. The designer died in 1926 and is buried in the church's crypt, having left the project before seeing it halted by the Spanish Civil War in 1935 and his designs and models burned for reminders of the old religion that had held Spain for so long.

But to me, this is anything but old. It's a church on the scale of a cathedral being built right before my eyes. These monumental projects always take a long time and to see the construction on the remaining ten towers (there's already eight up, but there will be eighteen- one for each of the apostles, one for each of the four gospel writers, one for Mary and one for Jesus, topped with a cross that'll reach just one meter short of the height of the nearby hill, because Gaudi believed that his work should not rival God's) and on the Glory facade, already seeing the Nativity facade around the back and the Passion facade by the entrance near finished. And that's just the outside.

Now, Gaudi packed tons of symbolism into the things he put in the designs, so much so that I don't really know what to tell you to look at first. Really, it's something that I can't and won't dive into. Ask me sometime and I'll do my best to point out things I know from the pictures I have and the things I've since read, but my recommendation is for you to go on your own and see this place. It's definitely worth what you pay to get in.

Oh, and the inside. I've started to see myself as a battle-hardened church viewer and this place even took me by surprise. I stepped over the outlines of the procession into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday

 and into the sanctuary and had to step out of the way to say, Oh wow softly as I stared up at the heights of the church.

The pillars were inspired by the kind of Gothic specific to this part of Spain, Catalan Gothic. I saw a couple of examples in Barcelona, particularly Santa Maria del Mar. But Gaudi also wanted to leave you feeling like you were in a forest and so the pillars throughout the nave are at differing heights.

The stained glass isn't all finished yet, letting in floods of white light all over the place. Even up behind the 1,000 person choir loft, the afternoon sun shone in.

 Especially from the skylight high over the altar, never to be covered with stained glass, pillars of light floated down into the sanctuary. It was just an amazingly pretty space.

And the best thing about it is that despite its grandeur, this is a place I could see myself worshipping. Not just coming to hear a mass in a language that I doubly wouldn't understand, as it would be in Catalan and not Spanish, the language that I can guess my way around. But here, I could imagine myself listening to the choir, watching the service progress. The layout of the church made sense and I felt at home even at the bottom of such a tall tower. I walked around with songs from my past times in choirs floating around my head due to the Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus encircling the bell towers on the way into the building.

I really just want to walk you through the space in a thousand pictures. It was only consecrated in 2010 by Pope Benedict and the inside isn't finished yet, but it's still amazing in every sense of the word. It also appreciates words. The main doors of the church, on the Glory facade, when it's finished, are coated with the words of the Pater Noster, Our Father, in Catalan and in languages from the world over.

 If a building could embody my ideals, honoring the environment we live in, the traditions we hold, the glorious God we serve and acknowledge the wonderful diversity of the global world we've all been thrown into, it would be this building.

Oh, and they have St. George. He's my favorite.

Also the patron saint of Catalonia. 

Clearly, the space's fate is sealed. I'm going to have to love it.