The configuration of the Sacred Space

Sacramental essence and Christian existence

Abstract

Is metaphor a valid concept for the configuration of sacred space? If so, are we at a time when, perhaps, the decisive thing is a clarification of the correlation between the Christian essence, the sacramental character of the liturgy and, therefore, the ways in which architecture -with the rest arts- should it serve itself as a channel to the sacrament? This communication attempts to respond, from the field of Aesthetics, to one of the questions that have not yet been fully answered since the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council: how the temple is and should be the domain of the Mystery, and not only nor mainly the scenario of a representation. Likewise, we point out some practical consequences that for the contemporary religious building entails the Eucharistic essence of the Christian life. Beyond the practical corollaries of modernism, still present in the liturgy, it seems today more than ever necessary to undertake a rediscovery, from the sacramental theological heart of the world, of a renewed conception of religious architecture that underlines its natural vocation to be the refuge of the Gift and the People of God. The essentially superior terrain of divine Art and Beauty are, in a primary way, the natural locus where this vivification of the sacred space is realized, the primal territory in which the metaphor emerges as the first engine of the architect's subcreative task.